Cendrillon
by geistklempner
Summary: Cendrillon Jospin, the first person to "die of unbelief" during the Millennial Kingdom. This is her story.
1. Chapter 1

"Excuse me?"

The librarian looked up at the bright-eyed young woman standing in front of the desk. "Yes, can I help you?"

"I was looking for books from the Old Earth," the young woman said. "Do you know where those are?"

"They should be on the second floor in the history wing. Most of them are on the side opposite the window –"

"No, I didn't mean those. I mean books actually from the Old Earth." The young woman leaned forward. "I heard you had a few of the ones that are still left."

The librarian frowned. How could she have heard about them…? "And why do you want to read them?"

"I'm doing research about the Old Earth. It's for a book for children."

"As I mentioned, there are plenty of books written by scholars in the history wing –"

"But that's not the same!" the woman's voice grew hushed with awe. "I want to see the words of people from the old world, written on paper from trees that grew on a completely different plane of existence…besides," she said, trying to recover an air of professionalism, "It's important to see the original documents, since scholars might insert their biases into their texts. So…please?"

The librarian stared at her for a moment, then sighed. "Very well. However, because the books are so old, you will not be able to take them out of their room, and you will remain under my supervision the whole time."

"Thank you!" the woman said, beaming.

"I'll need to see your library card first."

The woman passed the librarian her card, and his eyebrows rose. "Cendrillon?"

"It's French." Cendrillon bounced on her heels, hands wringing behind her back. "So,can you take me to see them now? Please?"

The librarian unlocked the door leading to behind his desk and beckoned to her, and she hurried after him into the deeper parts of the library.

 _(As written by Sylibane)_


	2. Chapter 2

The librarian was a bear of a man, with a fiery head and body hair visibly coming out of his shirt's neck and sleeves. Cendrillon thought that sometimes the evolution jokes wrote themselves. "Ook" she whispered, quietly enough to not cause offense. Hey, if Professor Hovind got away with making that joke in his video lectures...

"Thank you! So much!" she told him when taken to the rare-books room and signed for time. "So, there's a camera, and I've got to check in your backpack... We occasionally do get a thief, surprisingly. Collectors, you understand. And occasional nutcases who want to prove this or that conspiracy theory using old texts."

Cendrillon cheerfully handed over the Hello Chrissy backpack - a gift from some of the children under her care, decorated with surprising skill from first- and second-graders - and looked around. Unsurprisingly, it was mostly hardback editions, most with the covers bearing scorch marks or water damage; some books had been lovingly stitched together from two or more fragments. Printing presses had been one of the first thing to be restored or rebuilt, so Cendrillon was able to recognize quite a few titles from bookstores or the shopping channel, and yet - these books had survived the Wrath of the Lamb. Something as fragile as paper.

"What, like the Other Light?" she asked the librarian as he countersigned the card. "That and other groups. We've had to discontinue take-home access to everyone, is all. You're welcome to take notes, but the photocopier is outside this section and we've only got the one, so I can't let you use it, sorry."

Cendrillon thanked the librarian and let him get back to his desk, then when she thought nobody was watching - it was unlikely that anyone would bother reviewing the tape unless she did try to steal a book - stood in the middle of the room and inhaled deeply.

All books tell stories. Some tell stories about stories, especially if you're in a university library. But how they look and smell, tell yet a third story, and for a moment Cendrillon let herself take it in. Sharp, with notes of charring and flooding, more like one of the reconstruction sites than a library. She felt guilty. Most of these books' original owners had died, and most of those were in Hell, burning. She'd read "The Name of the Rose" a while ago, and wondered if anyone had died specifically to buy time to save the books from the judgements.

At random, she pulled out one of the books that had been stitched back together; this collection was small, a dozen shelves tops, and was arranged alphabetically rather than by subject. This one was from near the start of the run.

The pages were a mishmash from three different editions, new page numbers having neatly been handwritten in pencil on the corners by, presumably, the same person who had carefully cut the front cover and laminated it into a piece of hardboard to protect what was left of the book. A note said that a few pages were still missing, and asked the reader to insert them if found.

Cendrillon sat down and started to browse through, carefully as to not ruin the homemade ligature.

"A Brief History of Time, by Stephen Hawking" the title said, with a handsome space illustration under it. She'd have to find out who this guy was later. 


	3. Chapter 3

As soon as she began to read, it became clear that someone had done more than simply patch this book back together. Someone had scribbled notes in the margins and underlined words in pencil so faint that she had to squint just to see.

Most of the notes were related to the stars and their remains.

Next to the description of a supernova was written "related to burning sunlight?" (Cendrillon cringed, remembering the stories the older children had told about the scorching, searing light which had taken some of their relatives.)

The first mention of black holes had been circled repeatedly, next to the words "escape route?" And when the text explained how something as massive as a black hole could warp space-time, the stranger had scrawled "stop time from running out!"

"Is that even possible?" Cendrillon muttered under her breath. She turned the page and froze – the next page only contained the same sloppy handwriting of the note-taker, rather than the printed text of the book.  
"Stars create heavy elements – bring life to new worlds in supernova – searing light – create black holes – warp space-time – older than earth allegedly is (see speed of light) – STARS ARE THE ANSWER. If we can harness their power, we can defeat Him. We are not all going to die. We can use their light."

A chill through Cendrillon's whole body. A light different than the one she'd been taught to revere, a light this powerful…

Maybe there was some hint about who'd written these notes. She'd have to keep reading.

 _(As written by Sylibane)_


	4. Chapter 4

Cendrillon copied the book's title - maybe it was available new, if you ordered it - and the scribblings on her notepad, carefully put the book away, and kept looking. The stars, as they looked, seemed like an interesting subject, at least - it would drive home how different the world looked before the Glorious Appearing, without touching subjects like cosmology where she'd have to explain to her charges that entire fields of knowledge had been made obsolete by the Second Coming.

Sadly, any sort of direct astronomical observation would be pretty much impossible; with the moon giving as much light as the old sun used to (OOC note: This is actually in Kingdom Come. Seriously, no more stargazing?) the sky was ever a varying shade of blue, with the occasional tint of crepuscular red during moonless nights. Cendrillon wondered that the images of a dark sky would scare the kids, or be too far out from their experience.

She tried to imagine standing on top of her cabin, the dark sky above her with ten thousand points of light, each a different sun, maybe with different worlds going around it. For just a moment, after she closed her eyes and placed bright spots in the field of view of her mind's eye, something between the bookshelves shimmered.

There wasn't much in the way of post-Glorious Appearing books on astronomy, but Cendrillon made it home with a book of images from the Hubble Telescope (with new cosmology annotations) and one about the American triumph that had been the Space Race. She mostly wanted the pictures, anyway. 


	5. Chapter 5

"Mister Williams, sir, we really should build an orrery."

"What's that? Sounds like horrid. Is it something for the Hell House we did last year?"

"Uh... No, sir, I mean a planetarium. A big dark dome to show where the stars and planets are. We could build the structure, and the children could study star charts and put the dots in the right places. We can use those two old slide projectors that nobody's using anymore now that we got telescreens."

Cameron Willians considered the matter for a few moments, trying to look stern and paternal in the face of Cendrillon's enthusiasm. God said, "Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to separate the day from the night; and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and for years, and let them be lights in the firmament of the heavens to give light upon the earth."

He reasoned that there was no more need for signs now that history was completed, or seasons since the land gave its bounty freely. Wouldn't this take time away from more important teaching?

Cendrillon kept making her case. "It would be a great group project! The older kids can get started on math for making the slides, the younger can help with the art, and if anyone wants to do any woodworking that doesn't have to be structural, they can help with the rotating projector stand. And it would be a truly new experience for them!"

Cameron kept thinking. "For you, as well? You've never seen the dark sky."

"Well... basically, I was barely old enough to remember a glimpse of it, that's true. Sir, don't you ever miss it?" She tried to make it less than painfully obvious that she did, and failed.

"We didn't look at the stars often. Personally, I didn't much care for it - it made me feel small, and night was associated with crime and secrecy. I don't yet think we should build this planetarium of yours, Cendrillon, but it's definitely something to consider. I will have to pray about it."

Cendrillon deflated almost visibly at that.

At the next meal, she asked to take a break from her duties - as one of the first kids born after the Rapture, she wasn't much older than some of her charges, after all - and spent a day prowling bookstores, and a night making blackout curtains for her room; her friends figured she probably had to catch up on sleep.

They seemed to have been right; when three days later, to great applause, Cameron announced his initiative to build a planetarium with an orrery, to teach children about the wonders of God's creation beyond the Earth, Cendrillon was the first to sign up to help with the project, and enthusiastically promoted it. 


	6. Chapter 6

There were still some roadblocks in Cendrillon's project, however.

"This isn't something we can tell them about. It might give them the wrong idea."

"But I don't know how we can avoid not explaining the names, sir," Cendrillon said, trying to keep her voice even. "The names of the constellations are going to sound weird to a lot of them, and they'll want to know what they mean."

Cameron shook his head. "Do you want to lead them astray? If they learn about the pagan myths that gave the constellations their Greek names, they'll want to learn the rest of the myths – you know how children are – and before you know it, they'll start thinking there are other gods than ours. Children are impressionable, Cendrillon, and they must be taught the truth at a young age."

"But –"

"Just call the constellations by their proper English names – those are so much easier to pronounce anyway."

Cendrillon had given up arguing that point. She even tried to convince herself that maybe it was for the best – after all, the only book she could find that had any information on the myths surrounding the stars was scorched and missing most of its pages. She couldn't give the children a little bit of information and leave them wanting for what she couldn't provide, could she? What was she supposed to do, construct an entire mythology from the bits and pieces this old book left her?

 _(As written by Sylibane)_


	7. Chapter 7

Big Dipper just sounded that much less majestic than Ursa Major, but if that's what Cendrillon had to work with, she would. The bit about sailors using it to navigate, at least, would make for an interesting story.

The planetarium turned out to be a reasonably big hit with the kids - constructing the orrery had been a fun wood and metalworking project for some of the volunteers, as well, and even a six year old could help find a star on a chart. Cendrillon got the impression that even Cameron approved of the slides necessitating an old-style dark room for developing. Other elders, like Rayford, did not seem to approve of having an area of the COT campus in near-complete darkness, on the ground that it might give the older kids - or the younger volunteers - misplaced ideas about what constituted privacy.

After the bulk of the work was done and everyone had applauded Cameron for the quick results, Cendrillon found herself pushed to be in charge of the new facility - which was pretty much how she liked it.

"... So if there's no stars in the sky anymore, how do ships and airplanes know which way to go?" [[ . |Fatima]] asked. Cendrillon looked at the child - thankfully, she didn't track in as much dirt as she usually did, although Cendrillon did have to improvise a sort of shoe-shine station just outside of the planetarium - and nodded at her. "We've got Captain Steele here today! He can answer this much better than I can!"

Rayford was distracted. He was bored. The rare moment away from the light might've made a lesser man doze off in reflex, but Rayford was merely taking the opportunity to rest his eyes. "Don't worry about it, girl. It's under control."

[ . ]Hakim, the boy sitting next to her - just as grubby, but with eyes twinkling in interest, asked a more pertinent question to the airline pilot: "Captain Steele, I'd like to be a pilot someday! How will I know which way to go if there are no stars in the sky anymore?"

Even in a perfect world, young men with technical skills would be required. "Well, that's an interesting question! Just before the Rapture, and even today, we use radio beacons, and a flight computer that does the math to triangulate our position. Some of these beacons are on big towers on the ground, like phone towers; others are in the air, on satellites... The American Military built a Global Positioning System when I was about your age, and graciously let other people use it..."

Cendrillon couldn't suppress a smile when Fatima whispered "Told you so" to Hakim. She herself found the Captain's explanation genuinely interesting, for once.

"... So the satellites can still see the stars?"

Cendrillon interjected, explaining that since the GPS satellites are outside the atmospheric canopy, the sky would still be black for them.

"Can we fly on one? Daddy Rayford, can you fly us there someday?" The five or six children that had really gotten into the whole space thing looked at the airline pilot, half adoringly, half pleadingly.

Cendrillon wished she could've taken a picture on Captain Steele's face as he realized he'd have to explain his inability to do so.

Rayford had to spend a moment in prayer before answering. "You see, children, the space race was an important point in America's history - we reached for the moon so that God could make manifest that our way of life led to greater things than the Soviet way. Now that Jesus rules on earth as in heaven, these things are unnecessary... But, I'll see what I can do for an airplane ride, how does that sound!"

By the children's tone as they obediently said their thank-yous, after that one moment of hype, it sounded mildly disappointing. Rayford left shortly after, and let Cendrillon wrap up the informal lecture.

"...and after evening prayers if anyone's got a moment, Ekaterina did us a [ comics/up_goer_ ] drawing of the Saturn 5! Want to help label it?"

It was the first time in a while that Cendrillon got no takers, after the downer ending. The children filed out, Fatima last. She tugged at Cendrillon's skirt and asked, in a sort of stage whisper, "Can you make rockets that go down instead of up?"

That was out of left field. Cendrillon admitted ignorance, said that probably you couldn't because all the ground would be in the way, and told the inquisitive girl that she'd help her find out.


	8. Chapter 8 - Ad Astra!

Year is +53, Cendrillon is starting to be given some responsibility (mainly because she looks older than she is).

Time for SOUNDING ROCKETS! But, there's no infrastructure, so we'll have to go over the history of rocketry in a few years first.

The adults tolerate this and are mostly wanting to make sure nobody gets hurt. A bit of the COT estate that borders on one of the few curated patches of desert is dedicated to this.

Fireworks! Yay! That's a legitimate pursuit, and one everyone has fun with it, but making fireworks pretty distracts from making them go up. Cendrillon is mildly annoyed, goes to do her own tests with a couple of friends.

They find that the "testing range" is being used between firework shows by other people who have a similar intention! They're older kids and "teenagers" who want to sell fireworks in order to finance a sounding rocket.

A mini space race starts between the COT teenagers and a nearby group called The Outer Light. It's friendly competition... at first. Then there's some pushing and shoving and stealing of floppy disks, but nobody is stupid enough to break safety for the actual rockets. Fireworks shows continue.

Cendrillon is conflicted, the "space race" idea put things back on track, but she feels responsible for causing animosity.

The rockets are getting pretty good, the two "teams" have a score board for flight time, height, and some actual data gets collected (atmo density, etc).

A metereologist visits COT to get a copy of the data. This alerts the COT adults that it's gotten a bit beyond fireworks, but instead of getting mad they decide to make a bit of a production of it, invite the extended neighborhood so to speak, in a few weeks.

Everyone wants to show off, and design sharing stops for a while. More pushing and shoving when red team wants to watch a blue test launch or vice versa. Cendrillon has to calm people down, and is accused of partiality by the red team captain, Sergei.

Someone wipes the PC that had most of the shared designs. Each team accuses the other, and starts over from their own backups. Due to the setback and having a deadline, some safety corners are cut. Nothing major, but there are bruises and singed eyebrows. Red team has a failure to launch (they're trying strap-on boosters instead of vertical stack). While yelling at Sergei about safety, Cendrillon discovers that the red team has a much smaller support network than COT, and they've been running on a meal and a half a day to be able to afford to do this stuff. She helps them do a pantry raid on COT.

The next day, Cendrillon fesses up to the raid, explains why it was done, and is rebuked by Chloe and told that all the red team guys had to do if they were legitimately low on food was ask, sheesh.

Demo day! The sounding rockets go up to about two thirds of the sky now, which is pretty impressive. Strap-on boosters work beautifully and the red team wins on all categories except science-fair-style presentation. Rayford, being the airline pilot, gives him a certificate. Sergei makes a little thank-you speech in which he praises his team for the effort and thanks Cendrillon for the support.

Rayford is bothered by the lack of references to faith in the speech, basically shoves Sergei off the stage, and gives the speech that he thought Sergei had to give, which is longer and includes an altar call. The certificate ends up with Cendrillon's team, who give it back to the winners the next day.

A day later, the grownups have decided to take over the project (for safety reasons, apparently) and reorganize the two teams into one, which means some layers of hierarchy. That means STANDARDIZED TESTING! The tests have been written by Chloe, Tsion and Chaim and are a bit heavy on the theology, but not stupidly so. The test results aren't shared ("This isn't school, relax, you all passed!") but red team guys mostly find themselves in subordinate roles. Cendrillon is assigned to do the presentations and has to give up the lead engineering role to one of her guys.

With adult supervision comes a better budget and the work continues faster; the final rocket is sure to reach the water canopy, and is set up to transmit video and various environmental data. This is enough of a thing that local media shows up; Buck truthfully says that it's mostly the kids having done the work, but manages to hog the camera anyway.

A couple hours before the launch, Sergei is found crying in a corner; at the last system check, Rayford vetoed "his" boosters because the sounding rocket might crash into the water canopy, with fragments falling out of control or even an unplanned rainstorm. Sergei protested that the whole point is to see if it's pierceable in the first place. Rayford accuses him of star-worship and even morning-star-worship, and "disinvites" him from the launch. Cendrillon almost kisses Sergei, is too shy to, comforts him for a while and then when one of the kids finds them (they don't want to launch without Cendrillon being there) she drags Sergei out with her to go to the launch anyway.

The guy who replaced Cendrillon as engineering lead gets to push the button and the rocket goes up. Sergei gets to see the launch, but is pretty much neck-scruffed by Rayford shortly after. Cendrillon sticks with Sergei but is roughly pushed off as he's escorted off the premises. Most of the meteo instruments on the rocket turn off just before launch, but the cameras are rolling and Rayford says to go on anyway.

The rocket itself works as intended, except for the fact that it's climbing a bit too high and too fast, as if it was lighter than spec. Even without the strap-ons, it will hit the water canopy at some speed. Cendrillon shouts to Sergei that she's sorry, and goes back to the telemetry station - that's where she's needed right now.

The rocket's camera shows what looks like a translucent sheet of incredibly clean water before slamming into it; the camera snows. Cendrillon makes a copy of the recording.

An unpredicted rain briefly follows, causing a little bit of equipment damage and preventing the fireworks display that was supposed to happen as a conclusion for the event. Chaim and the metereologist show up to say that everyone has done a fantastic job and learned a lot, the rocket program was a success, and that effort would be redirected to other activities. The local news show most of the event, with artful cuts around the commotion and the impact.

At COT, the two teams are given a space for a very tame "graduation party". Sergei isn't there. When it comes out that he's been banned from the ground, everyone on his team and (much to her elation) almost everyone on Cendrillon's team walk out of the space. The wrapup party happens in Sergei's house; his parents have grounded him after the scuffle with Rayford, but agree that effort should be rewarded, so the grounding can start the next day. They are shown the full telemetry recording and congratulate the kids.

Sergei and Cendrillon, as well as a couple of others, stay up all night analyzing the telemetry, and determine that the water canopy has a ground speed of zero and is indeed water, but is blue-tinted rather than being transparent - it just looked blue-tinted because it's the same color as the surface sky. The two of them fall asleep in front of the terminal. They figure out a way to use the water canopy, rather than treating it as an obstacle - any space rocket would have to reach the canopy at low speed, have a "submarine" stage, and then perform a second takeoff from the outside of the canopy.

The next morning, they are woken up by half the COT cadre. Nothing untoward happened, quite obviously, but there is the problem of maintaining a proper image for everyone involved. Coincidentially, Sergei's family has been offered a mission trip to the Philippines; the offer is quickly accepted. Cendrillon is "temporarily" prohibited from straying away from Jerusalem more than 300 miles, to prevent her from following Sergei - which she has no intention of doing. The two hug, and then share a firm handshake on a job well done before Cendrillon is taken back to COT for a thorough dressing down by Chloe, who has been hanging around Buck for a while full-time and has misunderstood the issue; Cendrillon gets a lecture on how it's important to wait, and so on. Cendrillon daydreams of being an orbital dock worker throughout the abstinence lecture. By now Cendrillon is pretty sure she's heterosexual, but hasn't really clicked with anyone in that sense yet. Chloe's lecture does however make her understand that Sergei probably had developed a crush on her.

Leaving, she overhears Buck and Rayford be disappointed at Chloe for going too easy on Cendrillon. Going back to her room, she sees a couple of vans carrying away the disassembled launchpad. Once in her room, she fires up her terminal. There's a message to Sergei from the previous day, indicating that he's removed some of the meteo instruments (which would only work in lower atmo anyway) to get a few more meters per second of delta-V She writes back to Sergei.

"Dear Mr. Korolev, when you receive this e-mail, it will be because your work in the Philippines has progressed enough to allow connecting to the network. It was a wonder to work with you and I hope we can do it again soon! Here are my thoughts on a possible aquatic stage..."


	9. Interlude - Children of the Goats - 1

(by ako, whose website has disappeared so I am making sure this stuff doesn't go away. ako if you see this and don't want it published, or want to publish it under your name, let me know and I will remove it)

 _Earlier..._

"What are you doing?" Fatima asked. "Playing? Can I play?"

Hakim looked up from the bottom of the hole. It was a big hole, deep enough that he could kneel in it, and he was a lot bigger than Fatima. Next to the hole was a huge pile of dirt. She couldn't imagine how long it took to dig all of that. He must have been digging all day!

Hakim wiped the sweat from his forehead, leaving a smear of dirt. "Do you remember Mom?"

Fatima frowned. "You mean Mommy Chloe, or Mommy Irene, or Mommy..."

"No." Hakim shook his head. "Our mom. Our real mom. From before. Do you remember her?"

"I don't know." Fatima sat down on the edge of the hole. It was hard to remember anything from before. She'd been really little when Jesus came. Some of the grown-ups talked about before, about Sin and Iniquity (she didn't know what Iniquity was, but it sounded bad), and Tribulation, which sounded bad but was supposed to be good. Sometimes she thought she remembered bits, like Mommy brushing her hair, or the smell of Grandma's cooking, but these never sounded like Tribulation and Iniquity, so she wasn't sure she was right.

Hakim put a grubby hand on her shoulder. "Try. Think. She had black hair that was really long and pretty and shiny. She smelled like flowers. She used to sing us songs before bed, and kiss us good night. You'd go out in the garden while she was working and pull plants apart. She taught you to pull weeds so you didn't destroy the vegetables. You have to remember something. It's important."

...

"Daddy Cameron?"

Cameron looked down. A little girl was tugging on his pants-leg. Fatima; that was her name. Six years old, he thought. Somwhere around that age. One of the COTs; the Children of Tribulation. No parents; that made her the duty of him and all of the resurrected to guide and care for. He smiled. "Yes?"

"Where's my mommy?"

Cameron took a deep breath. He'd been anticipating that question. He'd always thought it would be awkward, but right that moment, miraculously, he didn't feel awkward at all. Thank you Jesus, he thought.

He bent down and put his hands on his knees. "You remember the Judgment, with Jesus and the Pit?" She'd have been what, four or five then?

She nodded, looking solemn. "Yes."

"All the saved people got to come to paradise and the unsaved people were cast into the Pit of Fire."

She nodded again.

"Well," said Cameron, putting his hand on little Fatima's shoulder, "your parents weren't saved."

Fatima's eyes went wide. "So they're down in the pit?"

Cameron nodded. "Yes they are. But don't worry. As long as you accept Jesus, you won't have to die and go in the pit. You can live a thousand years up here, and have eternity with Christ."

Her lip wobbled. "Did Jesus put them in the pit?"

"Yes." Cameron patted her on the shoulder. "People who decide for Jesus get to live up here and then go to Heaven forever, but the people who don't are cast into the Pit of Flames. So it's very important to trust and love Jesus, understand?"

"I understand," said Fatima.

...

"Hakim?"

The boy looked up from his digging. "What?"

"You were right. Mommy's down there. In the ground. Daddy Cameron said." Fatima climbed down to the hole. "Give me a shovel."


	10. Chapter 9 - Mare Nostrum

Cendrillon is still banned from going further out than 300 miles from New Jerusalem, and is somewhat bummed out about it; she seeks Chloe's advice on an appeal, and is told that there really isn't much of an appeal procedure; it's unlikely that this will be reverted any time soon, or before the time is right anyway. Cendrillon says that she wants to explore the sea, though.

"Do you think it's what God wants you to do?"

"I don't know. I'm trying to figure it out."

"Did you pray about it?"

"Yes."

"You know, if it was good for you to go out at sea - what a thing! - maybe you'd have gotten an answer about your appeal."

Cendrillon blushed; she figured that nobody would notice the letter she'd sent. To her surprise, Chloe continued.

"I know you, Cindy. Even if you go you'll probably end up bored to tears. Hmm, why don't you take two weeks off, instead of three, and go learn to sail on the Live Sea instead? It's nearby, there's these cute little white dinghies... when you come back you can tell us if it's worth it to buy or make a few for the pond here."

The younger woman - girl, Chloe reminded herself, although Cendrillon's plain and angular features could be made to look quite a bit older with just a little makeup - literally jumped in her seat, thanked Chloe profusely, and left with a skip in her step.

By the end of the day, Cendrillon was climbing the side of a split barge being filled with grain from New Jerusalem, to be brought over to what was once called Turkey. It wasn't as if she was stowing away; the captain of the ancient, pre-Rapture tug that she had talked to had let her on board, possibly as a way to relieve the boredom.

"You should've talked to me about it" Cameron told Chloe after dinner. "Now we're going to be short staffed for Professor Hovind's visit."

Chloe smiled at her man. "That's exactly why I did that. The Creation Science Ministry guys are going to come here, unload their demos, set up projectors, have to help us herd wagonloads of kids into a lecture hall and get them to sitting still... emphasis on sitting still... Cendrillon would probably be negative help for that, don't you think?"

Cameron thought about it for a moment. "You're right. Excellent idea. Do you want to help me with the newsletter after you're done with the dishes?"

The Millennial Kingdom, of course, kept its promise of universal fertility; even so, a trickle of trade between the various territories continued, and those who lived apart from New Jerusalem often wanted to sample the bounty of the Holy Land. Thus, the oceanic tug Heidi Brusco, three or four barges in tow, plied the Mediterranean carrying various grains out of Greater Jerusalem.

The sea is fair, the visibility unimpeded, and the occasional passenger that would ask for a ride was generally a welcome way for Captain Mueller to break the monotony; while there had been one or two cases of somebody running from their responsibility, it was usually a case of older folks reminiscing about a romantic cruise or young kids wanting to see a bit of world, as much as every port of call was going to be just as safe as friendly as the next. The latest passenger was of the latter persuasion; Mueller and his first mate, Leonard, as well as their handful of crew didn't mind the bubbly young woman and enjoyed having someone to explain their job to: few people care to ply the sea these days.

Capt. Mueller handed the wheel to Leonard and looked out of the open window on the small bridge to see the deckhands, Cendrillon included, swab the deck as they used to in the navies of old; it was something to do, and the Heidi Brusco could've used the shine - the tug was starting to show her age.

"I stand relieved, Leonard - going to catch a nap early." Mueller knew that his Glorified first mate appreciated the formality, and didn't mind going with it; the younger-looking man had been Australian Navy before the Tribulation. Mueller hoped to get up in time to see the coast of Cyprus came into view.

A couple days earlier, Cendrillon had asked him about how it was before the Appearing. He had to set her straight on some historical misconception; while Capt. Mueller was starting to get on in years and would have long been retired, if not dead, in the old world, he wasn't quite as ancient as the girl had guessed.

"Sorry, but nobody was really working with sailboats anymore... Sure, for fun, and for racing, but commercial ships ran on diesel more or less like this one. Oh, when things got bad, and nobody but Carpathia's goons had any fuel - I'm sure that somebody put charter boats to work smuggling, or just carrying food, but I was already in Petra by then." He'd told this non-story a few times, always with a bit of disappointment in his passenger's eyes. The next part tended to go better. "But don't think that it was exactly like this! First off, you've got to remember, nighttime was real nighttime; we'd sail under the stars, and have to keep an eye out for waylights, since our radar wasn't working a good half the time... And I've been in a few storms in my day."

"Please, tell me about the stars" his latest guest had asked. He did get to tell the tornado story, begging the Lord's pardon for making it sound just a bit taller and more thunderous than it had been, but only after teaching the girl what little he remembered of celestial navigation.

Despite Leonard interrupting to note that there was little point in sailing ships nowadays, diesel being plentiful and more efficient, Capt. Mueller had gotten the girl to promise she'd give sailing a dinghy a try when she got back home, and listened with some interest about this whole "Children of the Tribulation" ministry.

The crew quarters was largely empty; the three deckhands constituting the eight-twelve shift were sleeping soundly, and Mueller had his tiny captain's cabin anyway. Back before, there was all sort of worry about how automation would displace a lot of merchant mariners... what had happened instead was many decades of calm seas and unending daylight, and just not that many people wanting to live at sea.

Mueller laid down and let his mind wander waiting for his nap to start. After he'd told Cendrillon about the storm, as it sometimes happened, she got all interested about it, to the point of asking to read up ancient manuals for procedures to follow. Leonard told her that in the rare event of a storm, they simply take God's manifest wish to stay out of the area, and wait it out. Mueller imagined doing that during the much tougher pre-Appearing economy, and shook his head.

Cendrillon insists on working during her trip so they make her play assistant engineer, assistant cook, and at some point since she's still really energetic, the first mate has her swab the deck by herself, to give her something to do, which she takes as a challenge.

She does a good but not perfect job of it and the exercise knocks her out for a day or so, giving Leonard and Capt. Mueller a bit of peace.

The sea may be safe now, but it remains beautiful. Cendrillon has read some classical mythology and tells the bit about porpoises riding the bow wave being the spirits of dead sailors. She's asked if she believes in that, and she says no, of course not, it's just a cute story, but Leonard scolds her. Capt. Mueller muses that Cendrillon would have liked the times just before and after the Rapture, when the merchant marine was slowly opening up to women.

Once Cyprus is in sight, Cendrillon decides to bother Leonard some more, about navigation. GPS is discussed. The oceanic tug still has the GPS antenna installed, but it's silent.

"...and there you go, this is the navigation computer, we just engage it and it will take us right to the other side of the island where the harbor is."

Cendrillon took a few notes after the captain toggled the heavy switch and let go of the wheel. "Does it use GPS?"

"No, that was way-back-when. This uses inertial navigation and LORAN-D beacons. It's pretty much as good as the satellites used to be. How do you even know about GPS?"

"Oh, I'm a bit of a space buff..."

The captain shook his head. "Not much use looking at the past. The olden days were not fun, girl."

Cendrillon sighed before making herself react to the scowl with a smile. "So I'm learning a bit of seamanship instead! I've never been this far from land before, I can barely see the shore... it's strange... a bit scary... Do you think that's how Columbus felt? All alone in the sea with who knows what dangers?"

"Jesus is always with us" the captain replied curtly. This girl was definitely a bit much in large doses.

"The seas are safe. If there's a storm, we heave to and pray." Leonard interjected. "I todl you."

"Every time?"

"Yes, there's no real rush."

"And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by..."

"Ooh, I know that one! Bahira showed me it. Sea Fever, right?" Cendrillon had that written down in the notebook, and showed it to the older man. The first officer nodded. "Heh, there's me thinking it was from Star Trek Five all this time."

The two got talking about the old sci-fi series as the ship kept making its way through the calm sea, under the unceasing sunlight. The shadows shifted a little.

"Do you miss the stars?" she asks again.

Leonard just answers with a curt no.

Later, Cendrillon brags with Mueller about the rocketry program that she helped with, and is told to not brag. The older man is a little wistful, he is old enough to have seen a space shuttle launch or two, and notes that back then some people still thought it'd be possible to book a trip to the Moon by now. Still, it's something to talk about during a safe trip, so over the final leg of the trip to Cyprus, the ship's crew break out pencils and paper and end up coming up with "canopy boats" that use dynamic buoyancy to stay on the underside of the canopy and can be used as cameras and radio relays and positioning buoys.

The crew figure that calling them solar boats sounds too pharaonic-Egyptian, but that it's a good idea even if it's not needed for safety. The current ship's engineer is looking for work in an airplane factory next, so he says that he'll bring this one up to the people there.

Cendrillon emails Sergey about the satellite idea after the trip is over in Cyprus, briefly checks out the island and finds that there is almost nothing left of its rich history save for a little museum in the semi-deserted harbor, and makes her way back to New Jerusalem by air taxi.

A week later, Cendrillon is wearing a sky-blue blanket, and twirling to the point of dizziness around a bunch of younger kids playing. They're wearing white shirts over which they've drawn, as best as each could, various kinds of ships. "Don't let me touch you or you gotta sit down!" Cendrillon says, laughing. The play area has been set up with chair forts representing various ports of call, and the kids are carrying various items back and forth, to represent trade goods.

"A tornado? Where'd she get that from? I don't see any moral lesson in this, either."

"I think it's an economics thing, the kids have to get their trade routes done quickly but safely. Anyway, it's a cute game. I'll make sure I help her write down the rules, don't worry."


	11. Chapter 10 - Pape Satin

Cendrillon's room had the proud, artsy messiness of a dilettante; a desktop computer with a small CRT in a corner of the desk and the side panel open, poorly drawn sketches and watercolors and blueprints on every wall, a star chart on the ceiling, and the window half-covered by the sort of thing that in a traditional household would end up magnetized to the refrigerator - drawings and origami from the little kids under her occasional care. She was the first to admit that some were better than her own output.

Space had been made, though, for a sort of improvised weaving kit consisting of a frame with holes for the weft. Cendrillon, listening to a bit of classical music from her PC speaker, fervently moved a needle carrying a warp thread in and out of the frame, shifting her gangly frame a little as the Moon chased the Sun in the perennially blue sky and moved the frame's shadows. A little boy's voice, recorded on the computer and played back through the tinny speaker, reminded her to drink water at the end of some of the music tracks.

Cendrillon compared the result to a piece of similar fabric she'd bought during a trip to Petra a few weeks earlier; despite her best efforts, the cloth was still visibly sloppier. She sighed, and then allowed herself a smile when comparing her most recent effort to the messy spiderweb of her first one, currently hanging above her bed. Getting there! Maybe the next one...

Cendrillon jumped as somebody rapped on her dorm room door. Morning already? "Out of bed, daisyhead!"

"... Uh... Thank you Mercy! Coming!"

Cendrillon sighed. She'd been up all night again. At least it was light duty today, supervised play with the little ones, then a scripture lesson... "Okay, come on. Just gotta maintain."

"Okay kids, today we're playing... Centrifugal Bumble-puppy! I'm playing a robot in the middle, so you get to wrap me in foil first, let me put on my bike helmet first though. Then you have to hit my head with the ball, but so that you get me on the top..."

"...and then you twirl and throw it out, and we have to catch it."

"Very good, Hakim!"

"But we played this last week! I thought you said new games on Thursday!"

Darnit. She completely spaced. "I'm sorry, Hakim. I couldn't find anything in the library. And I didn't come up with anything. Do you think this may be fun anyway, guys?"

Cendrillon heard a few cheers, but couldn't shake the impression that most had some disappointment in them. Come on, she told herself, it's just today, she could take a nap at lunchtime between activities. Just gotta maintain...

"... and then you fell asleep during Scripture class! Again. It's what, the fifth time this month? And some of the kids are worried about you, Galina says you've been acting like a zombie! What's going on?"

Chloe wasn't annoyed: she was actually worried. Cendrillon, however, wasn't awake enough to tell the difference, and shook her head to try and get a grip. "... been up all night."

"Why? Are you sick? Is someone else sick and you didn't want to tell me?"

"...it's silly, I don't want to-"

Chloe sighed. "Cendrillon, you're a good girl. I mean, you spend all your time in the library looking for stuff for kids to do, and we really appreciate that, and truth be told, we've even been mostly okay with your crazy projects... but I'm worried. Have you been drinking? Anything like that?" Chloe looked at Cendrillon's face; her Glorified eyesight and her memories told her that she was looking at college-freshman sleep dep, not a hangover. "No, it's not that. I haven't seen kids trying to build an airship or looking for magical realms inside wardrobes lately, not seriously, so it's not one of your projects. So what is it?"

Cendrillon mumbled, cleared her throat, had a bit of water from the glass on Chloe's desk, and repeated herself, "...weaving."

Ten minutes later, Cendrillon was back in Chloe's office with her fabric samples. "I don't know, I just sort of... zoned into this." The last thing she expected was seeing the older woman's face brighten up.

"Oh, sweetie, that's wonderful! I think you've finally found your vocation!" Chloe tried to get herself into assistant-principal mode, and took a moment to compose. "Of course, you being, well, you... yes, I can see how you'd forget to eat and sleep. Have you been drinking water?"

"... yes, me and Elianto have been teaching ourselves GWBASIC on the old computers, and I wrote a little reminder program-"

"... of course you did. Well, I'm very happy for you, dear! This is... a pretty good effort actually! Would you like to be on leave for a few days, get better at this, and readjust your day-night cycle?"

"I'm not in trouble?"

"Of course not. I'm happy you found your vocation, is all!" Chloe quickly figured that things would get quieter around COT for a good while, and suppressed the gentle pang of regret that followed before thanking the Lord for making it easier to focus on COT's mission.

"I... Uh, thank you, Chloe. What you mean by vocation though?"

"On the first day of the Millennium, you will exercise new muscles, new ideas. You will plant vast acres, tend massive orchards, and build houses. All the knowledge, and the desire, will be poured into you." Chloe quoted. "Basically, the Lord has a plan for everyone... mine was helping Cameron run the Children of the Tribulation ministry. Yours... Well, we sincerely thought it was to keep our times interesting, in the Chinese proverb sense, but it seems like instead..."

"Wait, wait, I'm a seamstress? Oh, that's just great. I come out of the Tribulation and I'm Betsy Ross..."

Cameron had entered the office just in time to hear Cendrillon's remark, delivered in a terrible Sylvester Stallone impression, and sat down next to Chloe with his own lump of mock annoyance to bring to the table. "Someone's been into the restricted VHS section, hmm?"

"...I was researching Brave New World, Mr. Williams. We even-"

"It's fine, Cindy. Don't worry about it. So, praise the Lord, you've finally figured out what it is that you want to do?"

Cendrillon nodded enthusiastically, and broke out her masterpieces: two matching sweaters, including a blue and pink C in front and a COT in back - woven in rather than embroidered - for the Glorified couple. Sure, the lettering was still a little wobbly, but they could pass for something you could buy at the market... right?

Chloe started thanking Cendrillon profusely while putting the thing on, but Cameron held the garment up for inspection. "Chloe, I am very happy that you have found something... domestic... that you enjoy doing, and I hope that you'll stay with us while you make other decisions about the rest of your life."

"Of course, Mr. Williams! I don't plan to-"

"But you've got to understand... Well, this is a nice effort, a little amateurish still, but it's almost as good as what I could find at a store. Do you know why I am being critical of it, though?"

"... you want to encourage me to get better?"

"Not quite. There's a Scripture lesson in this, too, and I'd like you to take it to heart."

Cendrillon figured that, well, she did sleep through a lot of those lately, and she might as well listen.

"All our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away."

Chloe noticed Cendrillon's expression breaking, and put a hand on her arm, but let Cameron continue.

It never got dark, but despite the Moon's light being as that of the Sun, there was still such a thing as chewing the fat in the evening after work.

"How did she take it?"

"Oh, she started crying and ran off. Locked herself in her room. It took Chloe and Mercy two days to get her out, and even then... I think she's in the wood shop with Elianto, you know, the Italian kid?"

Tsion smiled. "You did the right thing, friend - it's important to strike when the iron is hot. I guarantee that she won't forget the lesson. Those two aren't purpling, are they?"

"Oh, no. Chloe peeked in. They've been too busy with the milling machine to even so much as look at each other. She's done stuff like this before... It's just that I don't recall Cendrillon ever answering an altar call, and our mission has priority over everything else."

"Of course. The consequences of putting off the transaction with Jesus are eternal."

The two Glorified men, journalist and theologian, nodded to each other in agreement and played a few more moves of their chess game, and other than mild concern for Cendrillon's salvation, put the incident out of their minds.

A day later, the two smelled like pine and box tree sap, and so did the contraption that they had assembled just in time for lights-out.

"Thanks for keeping me awake, Elianto."

"Sure! I've been wanting someone to give me a hand with finishing this thing. You should drag yourself into a shower before going to sleep, though."

"That's a good idea." Mercy took the visibly tired Cendrillon's hand, and started to drag her off to the older girls' dorm. Elianto smiled.

"What's this thing, then?" Tsion asked, walking past from behind the workshop building.

"Oh, hello Mr. Ben-Judah!" Elianto said smartly. "It's a Jacquard loom. All made of wood! Except that instead of punched cards, you program the pattern in by moving these pegs. Cindy found the design for me, some guy named Amish invented it, I just had to adapt the-"

"That's very nice, very nice, I'm sure. You know, the Amish were a denomination, it's not one person."

Hearing Tsion and Elianto discuss the machine, Cendrillon dragged Mercy back. "Mr. Ben-Judah!"

"Good evening, girls. You should really best be getting home."

"I have something to tell you!"

Tsion and Elianto looked at each other in puzzlement. Mercy recognized the tone of voice in her friend, and hoped that she wouldn't get grounded by association.

Cendrillon raised a hand, thumb and pinky touching and fingers extended. "I solemnly swear! In front of these witnesses! That I will never do hand weaving again! Because we built a machine for it!"

Mercy finished dragging Cendrillon back to the dorms after the man and the boy shrugged. What had that been about?

"Let's get you cleaned up before you go horizontal." Mercy briefly thanked God and counted her blessing: looks like nobody would get in trouble this time.


	12. Interlude - Children of the Goats - 2

(by ako, whose website has disappeared so I am making sure this stuff doesn't go away. ako if you see this and don't want it published, or want to publish it under your name, let me know and I will remove it) _Earlier..._

Chloe frowned. That was the sixth kid she saw tracking past, covered in dirt. She didn't normally mind a bit of mud, as long as they washed before they went inside, but this was getting downright weird. There was another one, a little blonde girl with a garden spade shoved in her pocket, her knees covered in black mud.

"Excuse me," Chloe called. "Excuse me. Suzy?" The girl was called Suzy. A COT, as Buck would put it, a Child of Tribulation. Cameron, she silently corrected herself, he's called Cameron now. Not Buck. There's nothing to buck here. She needed to remember that. It was part of God remaking them according to his will. She needed to embrace that.

Suzy glanced up, startled. "Yes, Mommy Chloe?"

That's right, Chloe remembered, she didn't have a family. Her parents had been Carpathianists. They'd died in the last battle.

Chloe knelt down and smiled. "Have you been playing in the dirt, sweetie? Gardening?" Gardening wasn't exactly necessary these days, with all plants being edible (and reasonably tasty), but a lot of people did it as a hobby, or a trade. You were more likely to get certain kinds of food with a bit of work. God helps those who help themselves, after all.

Suzy nodded, wide-eyed. "Playing. There was a big empty spot. I didn't think anyone would mind." She looked oddly frightened.

A wave of pity swelled in Chloe's heart. Christ alone would know what that poor child had been subjected to, with a Carpathianist upbringing. "Of course not." She ruffled Suzy's hair. "As long as you're not hurting anything, play where you like. Just make sure you clean up properly, and put the shovel back when you're done. And remind your little friends to do the same think, okay?"

Suzy nodded.

"Run along now," Chloe said.

Little Suzy dashed off. Chloe smiled. "Bless her, Jesus," she prayed. "Bless all their little hearts."  
As always, when she prayed, she felt an answering rush of pure love.

-

"I didn't tell anyone!" Fatima yelled. She hadn't. Okay, if she had told, she'd have picked Zayna, and Suzy. They were friends of hers, the same age, and their parents were in the pit, too. And they weren't weird, like Kenny or Michelle who prayed a lot, and told Jesus everything. But she didn't even know some of the other kids. There were a couple of older boys; a skinny black kid and a shorter blond-haired white one. They both looked about Hakim's age, which made them just about the oldest kids there were. And two little white girls who Fatima had never seen before stood at the edge of the pit, looking shy and clutching plastic beach shovels.

"How'd they find out then?" Hakim snapped. "I didn't say anything!"

"Hey," said the black kid. "The little girl didn't say anything. It was a different girl. Said her name was Jenny."

"Jenny?" Hakim frowned. "I don't know any Jenny."

"Tall girl? Black hair? Looked older? Maybe twelve?"

Hakim shook his head. "She can't be twelve. No one's twelve."

"I don't know! She looked twelve."

Suzy tugged on Hakim's elbow. "What are we supposed to do?"

Hakim looked down. "Dig." He sighed. "Fatima, show them."

Fatima let Suzy and the other kids down the bottom of the hole. She showed them the garden bucket she'd borrowed, and the pile a few feet away where she and Hakim had been dumping the dirt.

By then, the black kid seemed to be finished talking with Hakim. He climbed down into the hole, and unfolded the shovel he'd brought; a square-ended thing, about as long as Fatima's arm. It had a joint that could bend halfway down the handle.

"What's that?" Fatima asked. She'd never seen anything like it. She just had an ordinary garden spade.

"It's a camping shovel," the boy replied. He held it out for her to look at. "My...father had it. We had to hide out in the hills for a while, after things got really crazy. He used to dig latrines with it."

"Latrines?"

"Toilets." The boy grinned. "We didn't have proper toilets, so we'd have to poop in a hole."  
"Gross!" Fatima jumped back, dropping the shovel.

The boy laughed. "Don't worry. The shovel was for digging in dirt, not poop." He picked it up. "I'm Chris. What's your name?"

"Fatima. I'm Hakim's sister."

"Nice to meet you." Chris smiled and shook her hand.

Fatima grinned up at him. "Can I try your shovel?"

-

Hakim shook his head. "There's more of them."

Fatima looked up. Three girls had just come over the hill. They were all carrying shovels. Long shovels; grown-up size. She didn't know any of them. "Isn't that good?" she asked. More kids meant more digging. The hole was growing a lot faster now.

"There's too many." Hakim stood up. "If we keep getting more kids, we're gonna get caught." He pulled himself out of the hole, and walked over to the new kids.

Fatima watched from the edge of the hole, where she was hauling up buckets of dirt on a string. It was her idea, the string. Faster than climbing in and out of the pit. Hakim had called her clever for coming up with it.

"What are you doing here?" she heard Hakim ask.

The one in front, a tall black girl nearly Hakim's age, helt out a shovel. "We came to dig."

"How'd you know about the digging?"

The girl shrugged. "Jenny told me."

"Who's Jenny?"

Fatima ducked her head and hauled dirt. Hakim always asked this, and never got an answer. Never any more answer than Chris gave the first day. Some girl. Looked older than she could be. They wouldn't know her; no one knew Jenny. She was just some girl who knew about the hole.

Hakim wouldn't like it. He never liked it. But he'd let the girls dig, because the hole grew faster. That's what he always did.


	13. Chapter 11 - A Game of Spoons

"What do you monsters want from me!?" Zaki Ababneh was strapped down to a chair, getting his bearings from whatever sedative they'd doused him with. Around him were mostly men, dressed in body-fitting armor. Mostly men, meaning that some were women, but also that quite a few of them had robotic limbs, eyes, craniums.

"Nothing, missionary. You are expendable. You are just Angel bait." The robotic voice came from everywhere at once.

"You declare your own foolishness! Surely an Angel of the Lord will deliver me just as He delivered Moses!"

"No" Cendrillon said, cold as her superconducting sword. "When the Angel shows up we're going to defeat it, cut it up, and reverse-engineer its organs and weapons to improve our own. You can go home if you're still alive after that. The Angel, too."

The fight itself was brutal. Proton cannons and sonic deflectors could only do so much to contain an Angel of the Lord, and one easily had better strength and reflexes of five professional martial artists. By the time Colopatiron, Angel of Liberation, lay dead on the floor of the underground base, Cendrillon had been wounded severely by its flaming sword.  
It hurt, and the wound kept burning.

She saw one of the martial artists deliver the killing blow, and then the repo-meds swarm on the Angel's carcass before it disappeared, to harvest its precious fluids before it disappeared into flash and ashes. It was over.

Four casualties, including herself. The Omega Legacy had won this fight. There'd need to be many more such victories to subvert Divine will, and there would be. But it hurt. It burned.

"Help me!" she called to one of the organ harvesters.

The robotic voice coming from the sonic deflectors answered her plea. "You are too damaged. We cannot. We are sorry."

Cendrillon felt the impossible cold of the Cryo Legionaire's freeze cannon soothe the flames for a moment before it stilled her lungs. The emergency cryopreservation did not work, it rarely did. It existed as a measure of hope for those who would keep on fighting.

"IT IS PERMITTED TO WOMAN ONCE TO DIE, AND THEN THE JUDGEMENT."

The fire hurt. It burned. Like the Angel's sword. But all over. And it would never stop.

* * *

-

"Why are you up? It's three in the morning." Not that it much mattered: the Moon gave as much light as the Sun used to, and the sky outside was eternally blue. Nevertheless, COT policy was to stick to the standard day-night cycle. Younger kids had a curfew, of course, but even one of the workers being around was unusual. "Zaki?"

"Cindy? Why laundry this time at night?"

Cedrillon all but fell at Zaki's feet. "I'm sorry! I don't wanna hurt you! I- I'll do your chores for a week! Just don't hate me please!"  
The Glorified COT worker found himself unable to understand what was goin on, but did not lose any of the serenity that was his second birthright. He gave a polite hug to Cendrillon. "There's tears and sweat all over your bedsheet. Calm down. You cannot possibly have hurt me, and I cannot possibly hate you."

Zaki reported the incident to Chloe first thing in the morning. He noted approvingly that Cendrillon was doing her best to not let her lack of sleep the previous night interfere with her duties.

* * *

-

"...That's some dream. Most anyone else, I'd say drink some warm milk and go back to bed, but... I know you. What have you been reading?"  
Cendrillon blushed. Chloe never quite got into literature much, but did go though the classics during her time at Stanford, and gladly included Gibson and Heinlein among the lot. "Come on. This sounds like when you binged on Harry Niven and spent a week asking your Glorified friends for tissue samples."  
"Uh... Genesis."  
"Oh?"  
"Figured I'd read the whole thing back to front again last night."  
Chloe thought that this was encouraging. "Front to back, you mean."  
"Yeah, sorry. Anyway, I got as far as Jacob wrestling with..."  
"...and you probably fell asleep on that, and your head just had to set itself to figuring out how to actually beat up an Angel." Chloe chuckled. This seemed very benign, overall. If Cendrillon's crazy project of the season involved the Bible, she was going to be all for it. "So, can that be done?" Chloe asked conversationally, expecting a denial.  
"Yes, I think so. That's why I wrote a letter to the Temple telling them about possible countermeasures in case the Other Light starts doing some of this stuff. For example, well, proton cannons are a silly idea, but in real life, you can prevent a neutron source from-"  
Chloe had too much tact to facepalm, but it took some self control not to. "Cendrillon, I've heard about this whole Other Light nonsense too, but it's probably just some kids up north thinking they're being edgy. I had a phase like that too, you know. They wouldn't be able to hurt an Angel. But send the letter if you like."

"Thanks! I thought you'd be mad."

"Well, I don't think it will do a whole lot, but maybe it will make you feel better. It's not your fault if you ended up with the bad guys in your dream, and it seems to me that you'd rather be with the good guys when you're awake, so it's all good. You play the bad guy a lot with the kids, don't you?"

"Yeah. Cooperative storytelling. It's fun, my job is basically to lose in a way that they have fun beating me, and learn an ethics lesson."  
Chloe smiled. During her two years at Stanford, so long ago yet so vivid in her memory, she'd been around her share of roleplayers. As long as magic and dice weren't involved, she figured, it's fine. "Okay, just maybe don't use your dream as the monster of the week. I don't want to make kids think that it's possible to beat an Angel, it'd just scare them for no good reason."

"Getcha. Thank you."

Chloe offered a couple of sources on Scriptural commentary for the end of Genesis, then sent the younger girl off, mildly amused at the whole thing. Zaki would just have to live with Cendrillon being excessively nice to him for a few days.

* * *

-

The altar call at the main chapel of the Children of the Tribulation campus saw mostly reaffirmations, which worked fine for most everyone - it kept problems at bay, the occasions in which one of the children or students receiving the Lord were rare enough that they warranted a little celebration afterwards (and were an excuse for Alicia to bake another batch of cupcakes), and the community that had started off as an orphanage and had turned into a combination daycare, boarding school and missionary training camp never had to suffer the embarassment of an unanswered call.

That Cendrillon had, herself, never answered an altar call during a formal worship function was not a secret; such was recorded in a file in the COT staff roster, and obviously in the most observant of the Glorified's memories; people like Zaki and Chloe had spent a bit of time worrying about it over the years, but it had always ended up being a low priority worry. The few times that the French girl had been asked about it, she'd always said that she wanted to be one percent sure of her sincerity, or otherwise it would just have been for showing off, and that had been the end of that. Chloe, therefore, was somewhat surprised when Cendrillon answered the altar call that Wednesday evening.

"I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service."

The pastor-on-rotation was a trainee, about to go out into the world as a missionary - the need wasn't great, but every expectation was that it would be in the centuries to come. Cameron noted with satisfaction that he sounded appropriately stentoreous, a great improvement from two weeks before on his first service in the big chapel.

About twenty seconds later, Chloe's smile had frozen just a little. Cendrillon spoke too fast most of the time, and with her being noticeably quieter than usual, the pastor had to ask her what her profession of faith was three times. Eventually she said that she wanted to offer it in private, to Cameron, because she felt intimidated. And so it went, the gangly girl pretty much bolting into a side room and Cameron following with the usual confidence in his step.

Chloe shifted her auditory attention from the service, which was quickly wrapping up, to the side room, and to her mild worry managed to catch her husband raising his voice a little.

"...so... Dear God, I think we can be friends. So that means we're going to play the forks game, if you're okay with that!"

"... Cendrillon Jospin, just - no. You know what the Sinner's Prayer sounds like."

"But I didn't-"

"Yes, I know you always want to do things topsy turvy, but not this. This is important. I don't know what the thing with the forks was about and I don't care. Our works are as filthy rags, remember?"

"Yes, that's not it though, the forks game is just... I don't know the right words for this, I wanted to make an example and-"

"Jesus does not need your examples. Repeat after me. Word for word. Dear God in heaven..."

"Dear God in heaven, I come to you, in the name of Jesus, I acknowledge to You, that I am a sinner,"

And that was that. It wasn't that Cendrillon was disobedient; it was that she didn't know how to not speak like the warranty guy at the end of a radio ad. Chloe mentally made room in the next day's schedule for the discussion that Cameron would surely want to have with her.

In the women's restroom, Cendrillon locked herself in a stall until she had stopped freaking out. She wasn't the sort to lie, but... she just wanted to get out of there, and that was the fastest way. She'd have to figure herself out in relation to God, but not on Cameron's terms. The simple fact was, other than Chloe, Glorified people scared her.

* * *

-

"I call that wanting to draw attention to oneself rather than to the Lord."

"I call that honesty. It was weird, but it definitely sounded like it was from the heart."

"It didn't sound like a sincere profession of faith to me."

"Have you known Cendrillon to lie?"

"She lied when I asked her if she'd ever slept with Elianto. She said no."

"Well..."

"Come on, Chloe. That's obviously not true, we found them sleeping together!"

"Yes, but only in the sense that they were both passed out on the same bit of floor after staying up for nearly two days working on whatever piece of crazy carpentry Elianto was making! She thought you meant sleeping with, as in-"

"Nevertheless."

"Okay. You're right, and I'll grant you that. As a Natural human being, Cendrillon will occasionally fib. It's in her nature. This is why we all need to ask for forgiveness."

"But that is my point! That didn't sound like asking for forgiveness, that sounded like asking to play!"

"It's still the first time she answers a public altar call. We can encourage it, or we can discourage it. She's one of our best daycare workers and the kids look up to her. What do you want to do?"

"I want to figure out what the thing with the forks game is."

"Not something she made up, then? I mean, her main job is to come up with games for-"

"Then that'd be another thing she lied about. I have just about lost my enthusiasm for the unique personality of Cendrillon Jospin."

Chloe could see why. Even during his time as a globetrotting investigative reporter, her husband had never really liked things to be too far out of the box. The Glorified woman had to admit to herself that her own leniency towards youths like Chloe, Mercy or Elianto was because they reminded her of people she'd known at Stanford. She briefly wondered how her life would have turned out if not for the Rapture, and then, the thought went away, replaced with a sensation of peace. Never mind the maybes and never-weres; the Millennial Kingdom only had good things to offer her.

* * *

-

Having exhausted the books and computer media in the library, Cameron figured that he should ask Chaim about this one - the former botanist was a bit of a minutia maven, and may have heard of this.

"You mean the dining philosophers problem" the older man answered with a smile. "It's actually the sort of thing you give to university freshmen to chew on, so, I guess maybe there's a version for kids, and that's what she meant by "the forks game". As to why she'd want to play it with the Lord... that 'd be strange."

"Why's that?"

"The problem's lesson is to avoid deadlock. If each player does what comes obvious, then the game stops and cannot continue: in the problem's academic formulation, everyone is stuck for eternity. Or at least until one of the philosophers decides to act nonlinearly."

"I'm specifically worried about Cendrillon being stuck for eternity in Hell here, Chaim. She does have an influence on the kids, and well, I'm worried that it might be a bad influence."

"Hmm. You know, there's actually a pretty powerful spiritual lesson that can be gleaned from that problem, Cameron. The easiest solution is for one of the philosophers to sacrifice his right to a fork and let someone else have it for a bit, so that he may eat and then put his fork down. Cendrillon's job is to come up with educational games, right? Seems like she's doing it. Now, mind, this may be a bit too advanced for little kids, so you want to tell her to..."

"Yes, but that's not my point. I thought she was just being exhuberant, now she made it sound that she thinks she can teach the Lord a lesson!"

"That's actually worrying, yes. Did you pray about it?"

"Of course."

"And?"

"Nothing. That's the thing. Then I flat out asked her about it."  
"And?"

"She said something about a proof of love... Doing something for a friend that isn't what they want but it's what they need. She mentioned talking someone out of trying drugs a while ago, but wouldn't tell me who it was, saying that she promised to not tattle if he stayed away from whatever pills it was. So all I know is that it's a boy. Then she said that since God does a lot of the being-the-grownup-friend thing..."

"Sounds like she's got it pretty much together. Don't forget, these kids are still kids. She may be what, eighty? ninety? but she's still a teenager. I've heard much worse from teenagers - haven't you?"

Cameron nodded. "... Yes, but then she said, well maybe someone should at least try to return the favor. That's what worries me. If that's not hubris, then what is it?"

"Cameron, to me it sounds like Cendrillon needs something like an academic mentor. You really should consider setting up a gifted program at COT, for the more clever kids - you certainly have the resources. It'd help deal with, let's see..." Chaim may not have had a Natural mind, but a lifetime of research and a love of minutiae had honed his memory to near-eidetic levels. "... you've told me about Cendrillon, Elianto, Mercy, and sometimes even Kenny being a bit too clever for their own good. Now, for this mentorship role, I'd propose my humble self, but I've been asked to go to Cairo to look into some political stuff. How about Vassily?"

"He's in Indonesia. With Sergey, if you recall. We separated those two for a reason."

"I guess it'll have to wait... maybe after I get back?"

"Thank you, Chaim."  
Cameron figured that the matter could be let slide for a few weeks, and left it at that, for the time being.

* * *

-

"...no, you don't have to trade her the sheep if you don't want to. You've got to think whether it's a good deal or not."

Settlers of Catan may have been a bit too early for this class, but they were handling it pretty well: all Cendrillon had to do was occasionally remind the kids about the rules and to not touch the little chocolate bars and pralines too much - either eat them and take the ingame economic hit, or use them as game pieces. It wasn't as if anyone would get sick, but she had to clean the board afterwards. The snacks twist was working fairly well. After rumors that young unbelievers in America had resurrected some of the Halloween traditions, COT and institutions like it had quickly organized Fall Festivals to quickly reduce the appeal. Cendrillon sighed - she could tell that she was still in hot water with Cameron, and didn't want to push her luck, so she had to decline her cousin Ignace's invitation to check out a local event in nearby Lebanon. What to do with the inevitable surplus of homemade candy for the week after the fall festival had been one of the thousand minor problems a place like COT had to face, and a little change to the German game's rules had been Cendrillon's portion of the solution.

"Cindy, where's Catan?"

"Nowhere, it's a made-up place. You can tell because it has mountains, and a desert with a brigand in it. That's really not how the world works anymore."

"Why don't we just team up against the brigand?"

"Well... I suppose that in real life you would, but this is a nonviolent game. He doesn't hurt anyone or break stuff either, he just sort of gets in the way."

"Is that where Jenny came from?"

"Hmm? Who's Jenny?" The only Jenny that Cendrillon could think of was in a completely different class and age group. "No, like I said, Catan is a made up island. There are no mountains or deserts anymore. There's lots of made up places in games and stories: Oz, Narnia, Ankh-Morpork..." Ixnay on the Atchett-Pray, Cendrillon reminded herself, not yet.

A table of older kids had finished a game - without too many arguments - and asked Cendrillon to go over their proposed rule change for the next game, since they wanted to play again. "...Changing the terrain type with a Terraforming card? That's interesting, where did you get that from."

"Well, Jesus did at the start of the world, no? Also, you gave me that book on Mars last week, and I figured..."

And so, with a gentle warning from Chloe to just try and be nice to Cameron, nominally the boss after all, Cendrillon's life went on, month after month.


	14. Chapter 12 - A Game of Spoons, Editorial

Cameron Williams stared at the blank page. As director of COT, writing the foreword and receiving editorial credit for works published by COT workers was his duty and his privilege; however, his mind was elsewhere.  
He had spent the last week trying to get to the bottom of the latest "spoons game" nonsense, and discovered that it did not originate from any of the usual suspects, for once.  
He had asked Cendrillon, and she said she got it from Mercy.

He had asked Mercy, and she said she got it from Kathryn.

He had asked Kathryn, and she said that she got it from Georgios.

He had asked Georgios, and he said that he got it from Fatima.

He had asked Fatima, and she said that she got it from Jenny.

He had asked every Jenny - staff, trainee, even the current group of kids - and was told that no, she wasn't it. Fatima said that it had been a long time ago.  
Eventually, he tracked down what he figured was the original story, in the pre-Rapture section of the library. Probably not knowing who he was, the librarian - a hirsute, gibbous man who would have looked at home in a tree - showed Cameron no special consideration and made him sit through the entire rigamarole on how to treat delicate documents. Cameron made a mental note to reverse his previous stance and allow volunteers to help with the digitization project, even though they'd be exposed to unbelieving literature. Get the books on CD, print out on demand in the comfort of one's office, that was the ticket. The solution, marred by water and fire damage, had showed up in a Reader's Digest.

* * *

-  
A man has a dream: he dies and goes to hell.  
While in hell the man notices there are many tables, and starving people are sitting all around the great tables. There is hot food to accommodate all tastes on the table. Nevertheless, people are starving. In hell, they're starving with food torturing them right before their eyes.  
While all this food is right before them, each person is starving to death. Each person has a six-foot-long fork in his left hand, and a six-foot-long spoon in the other hand. The people in hell cannot get to the delicious food, because the forks reach beyond their mouths. Forks are too long. Spoons are too big.  
The next night, the man dreams of going to heaven.  
When he gets to heaven he sees tables as far as the eyes can see. The tables are full of hot, wonderful food. Now the man is very curious, for he sees that each believer has a six-foot-long fork in his left hand, and a six-foot-long spoon in the other hand. It's beginning to look like the same dream all over again!  
Yet, there's a difference. All the people here are content and satisfied and happy. Then, he understood why. In heaven, as they were seated at the table, each person fed the person on either side. The difference between heaven and hell was giving and love!

* * *

-  
Cameron selected the passage describing the game and let his finger hover on the delete button. The moral lesson was clear, but the description of Heaven and Hell expressed within the game simply wouldn't do.

He deselected the game, replaced Heaven with the mansion of a believer, and Hell with the shack of a heathen, and proudly put his name under the game description. There, that would do it.

There we go. Cameron made his word processor repaginate the title, since his alteration had made the "backstory" for one of the games a little longer. "An Uplifting Primer on Children's Communal Games, by Cameron Williams and staff. COT press."

He smiled at a job well done. Now to write that foreword.


	15. Interlude - Children of the Goats - 3

(by ako, whose website has disappeared so I am making sure this stuff doesn't go away. ako if you see this and don't want it published, or want to publish it under your name, let me know and I will remove it)

 _Earlier..._

Chloe was in the kitchen when Tsion Ben-Judah arrived. She had a pot of vegetable soup on the boil, and was throwing together a quick salad, when he popped his head in. "Need a hand?" he asked.

"No thanks, I've got it all under control." She tossed the lettuce. "So, how is everything?"

"Confusing." He frowned. "Jesus keeps telling me something, but he won't explain. Every time I pray, I get the same message, 'Be watchful', but he won't tell me what that means."

"God answers our questions in his time, not ours." Chloe smiled, feeling a moment of...satisfaction at her ability to find such a pious answer. How far she'd come from the days where she'd questioned and picked at everything, subjecting it to the harsh light of intellect! How she'd grown in faith!

"I know," Tsion nodded. "I've prayed for contentment and faith. But Jesus would have me watchful, and I don't know what to watch. I mean we're supposed to have a thousand years before Satan returns with his hordes..." He stopped.

"What is it?" Chloe asked.

"There it is again. Be watchful. Watch what?"

Kenny came tearing through the kitchen, trailing a pack of little boys. "Hi, Mom! Is it okay if I bring some friends for dinner?"

Chloe glanced over at the boys. They were mostly about Kenny's age, with a few older ones. A rather grubby black boy stood in the back, scraping his muddy feet on the welcome mat. She subdivided the soup and salad, and came to a conclusion. "Sure, honey. I'll just call Irene, and see if she can bring a dish of buttered vegetables to round out the meal. And I think your little friends," she paused, glancing meaningfully at the black boy in the back, "should get cleaned up properly. What is it you kids play at that gets you so dirty, anyways?"

"I don't know, Mom." Kenny grinned. "I stay nice and clean. See?" He held up his hands for her inspection.

"Yes you do, dear. Very good. Now show your friends where to wash up, and you might want to lend...Chris, right? Lend Chris a nice clean outfit."

As the kids tromped out, Chloe smiled at Tsion. "There's some sort of trend going on. Mud pies, or mud-ball fights or something. I don't know what. Half the kids are into it, and it involves getting really dirty."

"Kids," Tsion nodded. "Would you like a hand now? I do a mean fruit salad."

Chloe sighed, glancing down at her salad bowl. "With Kenny's friends eating here, I get the feeling the more food, the better."


	16. Chapter 13a - Looking ahead

"So, Elianto. Did you find anything interesting at the job fair?"

"Uh... Mr. Williams, yes, definitely! And, I've been talking with the Langley family, like you said, and..."

"I bet they'd love having you as an apprentice."

"That's what they said too, only..."

"Yes?"

"Well, they make high performance aircraft. It's more Cindy's thing, no? They loved my wings, but that was more of a historical recreation thing, and anyway, other than people flying on business and mission trips the market for personal aircraft is-"

Cameron allowed himself a slight frown. "Cindy's thing?"

"Well, yes, she's all over rocketry stuff again. Did you see the new orrery we built? I'm almost embarassed of the old one!"

"...Elianto, do you have feelings for Cendrillon?"

In two seconds, the Mediterranean youth went from fidgety to still and wide-eyed.

"It's all right if you do, you know. Both of you are the right age and, as much as you're both more than a handful, I have no reason to doubt the virtue of either of you."

"Er, thank you. Anyway, no, we're just... friends, I guess. Uhm."

"I see. So, you'd rather keep working here rather than go to Europe with the Langleys. I guess we're lucky." As a Glorified, Cameron Williams had the uncanny ability to deliver a deadpan that would leave any Natural guessing as to whether it was meant in earnest or sarcastically.

"Mr. Williams, my passion is working wood. Surely I can be of more help at COT than at an airplane factory? Metalwork requires a different mindset - it's all about precision, with no grain to follow..."

Cameron gave Elianto a genuine smile. "Relax, Elianto. We aren't going to fire you any time soon. And you do good work with little supervision - you should find an understaffed mission trip group and sign up with them next year."

"Next year Cindy can travel again, right? I told the Langleys to talk to her instead of me."

"I know you mean well for you friend, but don't take initiative in that sense."

"Well, okay Mr. Williams, but why?"

"I don't think aerospace is a particularly ladylike occupation... and besides, Cendrillon would get distracted and wander off to do something else."

"Well sir, you know the quote, not all who wander are lost."

"Tolkien." Cameron had tried to encourage children, regardless of age or role, to read about Narnia rather than Middle Earth when the mood struck for fantasy literature, but consistently found library checkouts and downloads for the latter to edge out the former more often than not. "I do have to wonder about Cendrillon - being lost, I mean."

"Well sir, I think she knows exactly where she is and exactly where she wants to go. This week anyway."

What amounted to a debriefing for the job fair was quickly coming to a close.

"Elianto, have you heard of anybody in your age group discussing unnatural attraction?"

"I'm almost certain that I am straight, sir." Elianto knew from years of experience in pranking that it was difficult to ouright lie to the Glorified, but misdirection worked. "Just... Not about Cindy, sir. We know everything about each other, it'd be like wanting to court my sister, yuck! Sides, she's older than me. Five years used to be a big deal."

"That's fair... Very good. If you do, let me know."

Cameron let Elianto run off and closed his eyes for a moment. Lord, give me strength, for I have to talk to Lije next...

"Next! Elijah Baley, come in!"

* * *

"...and they told me to go away. Both the Langleys and the mission trip coordinator. Honestly it kinda hurt."

"Why, do you want to leave? I thought you liked working with the kids."

"I still can't, the 300 miles thing is still in place."

"Maybe that's why. They didn't want to show you shiny stuff and then take them away."

"Yeah, but the Langleys didn't even let me talk shop a bit. Elianto, at least you got to."

"I think they're getting the net up in Indonesia soon, that way you can pick Sergei's brain instead."

"Yeah... maybe it's just that I'm not really good at anything. Chloe says I should do logistics, like her. Jill of all trades and master of none."

"...is better than master of one. People leave that part out."

Cendrillon giggled. "Bun la toate și la nimic!"

"Bun what?"

"Oh, Matthew's been teaching himself Romanian. A bit, anyway. It means "good at everything and nothing"".

"You're really good at coming up with crazy plans. Actually, why back on space stuff? Never seen you poke at something twice."

"Eh, it's just... they didn't really let me and Sergei finish." Elianto immediately wondered if Cindy missed him. Wait, was he jealous? Nah.

"Eh, helping you guys with the gantries was fun, the actual rocketry was a bit too high tech, is all. What did you guys want to do?"

"At least take a picture of the stars. I just... I don't know if I believe that they're still there. What if they're not?"

Eliano shook his head. He could spot Cendrillon dodging a question a mile away by now.

"Okay, you got me. Manned launch. I want to see for myself. Don't you miss the night sky?"

"I was a toddler... I don't remember it."

"I do. And even that is weird, because I was little, too, just... there's this one starry night I remember very vividly. It was right before the Appearing. Stuff had calmed down for a little. We were in an internment camp, because both my parents were Christians. This older girl was sort of babysitting me. Jennie, I think her name was. That night... it might have been the actual last night, she was going over the constellations with me. Kept telling me that I didn't need to fear the sky."

Elianto had heard this story. The first time he heard it, he'd asked what had happened to her. Cendrillon just said "Sheep and Goats". He never got that part, personally. Farmers and ranchers near COT kept a few of each, for the wool and cheese, and to him the goats were immensely more interesting. He never had to help anyone climb somewhere improbable to retrieve a sheep, for one.

"Anyway, if you want to send a poke to Sergei, I bet it'll get there in a week or so. The net guys were bragging all about it at the job fair."

"Oh? I thought it was the missionaries setting it up?"

"Looks like they got beaten to it. There's these guys called Transfer On Line who are setting up a mesh network in places where the regular net trunkline isn't cost effective yet."

"Oh yes! I think my cousin was telling me about them. Said they were going to give him a manager position."

"Who'd put kids in charge?"

"Eh, honestly it was probably just Ignace bragging. He does that. But! Apparently it was a thing in Silicon Valley. Before the Rapture ended the dotcom boom, they were letting teenagers start business and run thngs quite often. Chloe's from there, you know. Well, went to school there."

"From there? Well, sounds like she misses it."

"A bit, I think. It's hard to tell with the Glorified."

The net poke to Sergei didn't go through - yet, although traceroute showed a new network close to where he was - but that evening Cendrillon got one from Ignace, instead, out of the blue on her little CRT screen. 'I need a hand with Tunnel Of Love. Talk soon please.'"

'Tunnel Of Love?' Cindy typed back on her terminal. 'What's that? Did you message me instead of Nicolette again?'

Cendrillon had patched her poke program to skip profanities, so she got a bunch of asterisks.

'Hey, it's okay. If you need a hand I can try to help.'

'Thanks, we're good. I think. It's a family thing.'

'Ignace Jospin, I am as much family as Nic is. Tell me or I'm going to get everybody worried, starting from Mom.'

Cendrillon read the sequence of pokes and looked at the screen as they timed out and deleted themselves. She was familiar with this sort of ethical problem, just... not in real life. So, she prayed. All night.

At what passed for dawn in the Millennial Kingdom, she still had got no sensible answer. If she helped, people would die. If she tattled on Ignace, people would die.

Dare she talk to Elianto or Bahira or Mercy or any of her other friends?

No, she decided. Let them be big kids for a bit longer.

Ignace, kid cousin, the occasionally whiny, the braggart, the lazy. "And yet, he's been a grown up for a while. And now so am I."

Bleary-eyed, Cendrillon wrote a formal letter to her parents, in the style that she'd been taught. "Do you think it would be possible, dear mother and father, for us to have my birthday celebration a little early?"


	17. Chapter 13b - The Cookie Jar

The problem was simple: not too far north of COT, the Kids On Fire ministry tended to those youth that had displayed same-sex attraction or gender confusion. Ignace had agreed to help Tunnel Of Love break at least some of the kids out; after hearing from her cousin - who thought he was messaging Nicolette to help coordinate the extraction - that the ministry used coercive methods, so had Cendrillon. However, Nicolette's plan to surround the camp and threaten to shell it was unlikely to work. There was too much risk of death, either by Divine lightning, or by the explosives themselves. Ignace had pointed out that freedom was worth the risk. Cendrillon knew her cousin well enough to be aware of his tendency to brag and grandstand, but even through text messaging, she could tell that he meant it. Having to face a life-or-death problem, for real, had been a bit of a shock to her. Fortunately, she'd played simplar scenarios dozens of times as a game. Eventually, the two came to an agreemen, and Ignace insisted that they formalize how The Only Light did things, by binding oath. Cendrillon felt somewhat dirty about that. What about the Apostle James? Ignace said that it was part of the point for them, of course. Cendrillon thought for a few moments, and figured that her discomfort paled compared to lives being at stake.

"... Fine. I solemnly and irrevocably swear, upon the integrity of my mind, that I won't rat on you unless you do something violent."

"...Thank you. I solemnly and irrevocably swear, upon the integrity of my mind, that we won't try to blow the place up unless your plan fails."

"And that you won't make it fail on purpose."

"And that we won't make it fail on purpose."

That looked like a decent deal. At least, it was the best she could get. When Ignace picked her up, they repeated the oath in front of some other TOL kid, barely entering puberty as far as Cendrillon could tell. Officially, they were going to go look for geodes. The driving age had been a matter of some content in Greater Jerusalem, but there just yet weren't enough people to create much in the way of traffic outside the city, and some people still preferred tractors over farm animals, so the rules weren't really much enforced. Cendrillon kept thinking of a plan that had a chance of working outside of a roleplaying scenario the whole trip, and narrowed it down to three. All of them involved COT preparing a gift for Kids On Fire. Maybe it had been long enough since the Trojan Horse.

* * *

Cendrillon was taken by Ignace to The Other Light's camp. They had had the sense to blindfold her and go a roundabout route, and to set up a cell phone jammer on one of the trucks, but she couldn't help thinking that the jammer itself was a giant homing beacon. The place looked like one of those low-budget post-apocalyptic movies from the mid 1980s, to the point that some TOL operatives had embraced the aesthetic. The entire time, some big guy with a shaved head who was trying his best to look older than he was kept a revolver trained at her. There were only two bullets in it, that she could see, but it was more than enough.

"...you were making explosives? In a RV? Are you nuts?"

"Like I said, our plan is - was - to shell the place. Dynamite, launched with catapults. It's easier to carry around than nitrocellulose, and we don't yet have the industrial process to-"

The RV had seen better days, but looked fairly normal from the outside. Inside, all the usual fixtures had been removed to make room for a still, condenser, and other chemical apparatus. Save for a few places which Cendrillon guessed were the critical components, the workmanship was shoddy. A hammock was strung between two hard points on the truck chassis.

"Ignace Jospin. This is dangerous AND stupid. Never mind hurting someone on purpose, this looks like it's about to blow itself up at any moment!"

Ignace grinned. "That's actually part of the design. Think about it for a second. There's a lever to lock the steering wheel and gas pedal. Or, if that's not an option..."

Cendrillon seriously considered turning her cousin in for a moment. This was beyond idiotic. No, she reminded herself, he's family, and you promised.

"Just... whatever. Wait. Dynamite means nitroglycerin, so you have glycerin, right?"

"Yeah, it's in that bottle over there. We get it out of soybeans. Jamison was going to start nitrating the next batch in-"

"Awesome!"

"Why?"

"I was worried about getting our hands on some! Now we have everything we need!"

"... what?"

"Here's the new plan, if you want to go through with it. We, COT, bake a bunch of cookies for the Kids On Fire ministry guys. You break into our bakery, steal a few, leave a nasty note just to say that you did, and inject glycerin in the others. We deliver them, and let you know when we do. You get into the camp, and guess who won't have eaten laxatives?"

"The kids being punished. Hmm. Yeah, that works, we can just break some locks and walk out of there."

"Yeah!"

"Problem, though" one of the Tunnel Of Love folks answered. Cendrillon figured that it was a girl, but she'd taken great care to make herself look more masculine, to the point of sporting a fake mustache hanging from a septum piercing. "Two break-ins increase risk. Can you spike the cookies after baking them?"

"Igor's got a point. We've learned that we can't push our luck. Other than The Only Light guys for some reason, we get busted a lot."

"I guess. The issue is that Mr. Williams is going to want to try these. If he gets the runs it'll be a big red flag. And yes, Glorified don't get sick, but... well, they have to go to the bathroom same as everyone else, and that includes getting the runs. We had a bit of an experience last time Alicia got the smaller kids to make tacos." The Other Light operatives around Cendrillon laughed politely.

"Do a bait and switch?"

"I'm terrible with sleight of hand. The little kids catch me when I show them card tricks, Cameron's a Glorified and used to be a reporter, he'd spot it."  
Igor cleared his throat, trying to make his voice sound deeper than it was. "How about an intercept? Who delivers the package?"

Cendrillon tried her best to not giggle - the package? These are cookies, possibly prank cookies, not drugs or weapons. A quick look around made her realize that these people, all of them younger than herself, probably had done at least some drug or gun running. And in the Millennial Kingdom no less! She let the sobering thought wash over here. "Kenny Williams, probably. He's on rotation for the van pool for that day and likes to do early morning deliveries."

"Why don't you ride along? You can spike the cookies en route."

"I'd look really suspicious."

"Not if you also eat some."

"... you want me to give myself the runs on purpose?"

"Like you told me, the alternatives are a lot of people getting zapped by lightning if we do it our way and fail, at least a few people people gettng shot or blown up if we do it our way and succeed, or a lot of people being somewhat inconvenienced for a day or two if we do it your way."  
Cendrillon had to admit that her cousin had a point. "Yeah, okay, fair. I guess that if it's my plan... But I want a promise from you guys."

The three agents of The Other Light, or Tunnel of Love, or whatever they were calling themselves this week (Cendrillon couldn't help think of Dracula and believing that inverting one's name was good cryptography) gave her a stare. "What's that?" the guy with the revolver asked, the first time he'd spoken.

"If this works... AFTER this works, well... note that it did, OK? I mean, if nobody has to get hurt... "

"Fair. If it works. If it doesn't we're still going to shell the place."

"You'll get zapped by lightning if you do."

"No, we have developed a nondeterministic delayed actuator for the catapults, and-"

"-and you won't have to use it, I promised, and I mean it. I'm going to call you when we do the delivery, then you can get there and do your thing, and the least I know about your other plans, the better."

Cendrillon was dropped off just out of sight of the COT campus about an hour later, plus one large turkey baster full of glycerin and a few of the geodes that she'd been ostensibly collecting with her cousin.

* * *

Enlisting Alicia Melchiott's help for the cookies was no problem at all; a couple of the usual chore-swapping deals that go on in every volunteer organization and the girls had the bakery to themselves for long enough to produce a truly titanic batch of cookies. Cendrillon's mind was a bit all over the place, enough so that she let slip to Alicia about a dream she had had a few weeks earlier.

"You know" Alicia said, gently stopping Cendrillon's hands as they kneading the dough "I think I've been there." The baker's apprentice showed Cendrillon how to do it properly, by gesture. "If somebody tells you that you're a weapon, tell them... No, a shield."

"Thank you."

Mercy interrupted that train of thought. "So... why does cookie dough need kneaded? I though that was just bread and pizza."

"Oh, it doesn't, strictly speaking, but we want this batch to be very pretty and fluffy, no? It makes sure there's no clumps."  
Cendrillon was unable to be talkative - rather than forcing herself and risk sounding fake, she just focused on her work. She almost spilled the beans at Alicia. Sloppy.

* * *

Cendrillon stopped trying to baste the cookies with glycerin in a moving van and, looking through one of the window, broke out her stenopad. Good, it got signal. She poked Ignace.

"I need you to run interference, we're getting there earlier than I thought, I won't have time to baste all the cookies."

"We can't find you!"

"What? But we're the only van on the road for miles! And it's bright blue!"

"I know. Still can't find you. It's already hot enough to get mirages on the paved road, maybe - Huh, idea. Tell us the roads you cross and we'll do some math on your timing."

"Okay. We just passed exit 42... now a group of cypress trees, not sure if it's on your map... creek"

"Weird. We should have visual on you. Okay, Max is going to drive ahead and block the road."

* * *

The black car of unspecified make, clearly someone's labor of love, sat astride the road blocking most of it. Max genuinely didn't see the COT van come until the last moment, and had to make himself look busy. Kenny and Cendrillon quickly got out and looked at what the problem was; neither would consider just going around, of course.

"... yeah, two tires in one go. Someone must've been dropping nails or something." The skid on the road looked pretty convincing. "I got a spare, but, just the one. So I was going to tear up the old tube to use as padding and at least limp to a mechanic."

"Hmm. I like that idea. I think we got some rags and stuff in the van."

"Need a hand, guys?"

"Thanks, Cindy, we got it. Changing tires is boys' work. Can you go back in the van and tell Reverend Fischer that we'll be late? And look for rags or packing peanuts."

"Sure!"

Kenny and the oily-looking youth set to work. In the van, so did Cendrillon.

* * *

The cookie delivery ended up being well timed: one of the kids enrolled in the ministry had just dedicated his life to the Lord and promised to turn away from same-sex attraction. Reverend Fischer welcomed the visitors into the prayer circle, and tolerated both the younger kids' glances towards the huge plate of freshly baked assorted cookies that had been put on a table, and someone's mention of "second breakfast, or maybe elevenses" after the last Amen. The prayer had been put on the PA, so there was no doubt that the enrollees currently being punished for recalcitrance heard it - including missing out on the cookies, obviously. Cendrillon has to poke Kenny a little to try one.

"Just one."

"I... Just not a big fan of cookies in general." Kenny wasn't sure why, but that particular pastry always carried a bit of squick with him. He couldn't help think of his parent making out. As much as he knew that two Glorified simply wouldn't do that, the mental image simply wasn't comfortable.

"Yeah, I almost made myself sick eating cookie dough when we were making these" Cendrillon answered with a smile "but it'd be rude since we've been invited to break bread. Still counts as bread."

Kenny conceded the point and the two ended up sharing a cookie, much to his vague discomfort and Cendrillon's puzzlement. He saw her eat a couple more from the giant pile, and made small talk with Reverend Fischer until he noticed that people were excusing themselves to the restroom more and more frequently. His own abdomen rumbled.

* * *

While it was by no means an emergency, the situation was uncomfortable enough to require handling. Rev. Fischer staggered out of the restroom, heard its door slam as another staff member quickly occupied it, and sent out a few phone and radio calls asking for porta-potties before scrambling for an empty restroom again. Kenny had said he'd get back to COT with another truck and bring some; having eaten only half a cookie, his metabolism had managed to quickly handle whatever bug the pastry had caught.

"Hey guys! We heard it on the radio that you're having intestinal problems! Why don't we park here, we got four RVs and you can use the extra facilities."

One of the staffers fumbled just a little bit with the lock, and the RVs were let inside. They looked oddly empty of fixtures, but the ones that mattered at this particular moment were there, and they had wipes.

It took Igor, Nicolette and Raymond only a few minutes to get to the discipline rooms and break people out; a few staffers ended up caught by surprise when the RVs they were in moved out abruptly, and had to endure a brief but very uncomfortable walk back to the ministry camp. Cendrillon was found clutching her stomach along with most everyone else after Kenny came back with a flatbed full of port-a-potties; there wasn't much to do but let the artificial illness flush itself out and notify the families of the runaways.

Alicia's good name was cleared after a day of questioning, when the mailman delivered a very derisory missive from Tunnel Of Love taking responsibility for the incident. "The beautiful, unique souls that you tried to indoctrinate into suppressing their sexuality are now free to live and love as they choose!" The missive ended with a picture of flamboyantly dressed people atop odd-looking homemade vehicles.

* * *

Cendrillon staggered out of the restroom for what she hoped would be the last time in a while. Operation complete. Nobody'd died. Nobody got hurt.  
It took a lot of cleverness and all the luck she could get, but nobody had died. There just didn't have to be a fight.

There didn't have to be a fight.

That was it. That was the key.

There doesn't have to be a fight in 900 years, either.

"Thank you, God. Thank you for letting there not be a fight. And... I think I can be your friend now. I have something for you that's worth something to you. I can show you that there doesn't have to be a fight."

She thought about it. She couldn't do that. What if there was nothing past the canopy? What if there was nowhere for the unbelievers to go to other than Hell? Technically, she'd just lied to God. Not a good start. She knelt, and apologized profusely.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry! That was too fast of me! I do that! I'm going to have to go back up and find out. It's the only way. And then... can we be friends maybe?" Cendrillon looked up, and ahead, and inside, but could find no answer. "Please?"

But she would have to be make sure that there was an option other than victory or defeat. She would have to be certain, so that she could show others. She would have to go and witness. And if it took spending every penny and calling in every favor... so be it.

Making the rounds, Raymie Steele found Cendrillon's light on, the door slightly ajar. She'd fallen asleep praying, judging by her position. Raymie smiled at just how innocent that looked - he'd seen that before, but usually with much younger kids. With a gentleness of touch that only a Glorified or a mother could be capable of, he tucked Cendrillon in.

In her dream, she was bathed in chrome, seeing the world through diamond eyes.

Just shy of too late, she'd found her calling.


	18. Interlude - Children of the Goats - 4

(by ako, whose website has disappeared so I am making sure this stuff doesn't go away. ako if you see this and don't want it published, or want to publish it under your name, let me know and I will remove it)

 _Earlier..._

The new kid showed up while Chris was in the middle of the story about the steamshovel.

He told the best stories, Fatima had ever heard. He could remember these amazing ones from before. Stories that didn't have God or Jesus or anything. People would go do fun stuff that was really fun, and afterwards there wasn't a lesson to repeat back.

Fatima didn't stop working, because Hakim would get mad. He was already glaring at the group of kids hanging around Chris. Besides, she could hear just fine if she pulled up buckets of dirt close to where Chris was talking.

This story was about a steamshovel named Mary Ann, and how she dug super fast for her best friend Mike. It was Fatima's favorite.

Hakim dropped his shovel and walked off. At first Fatima thought he was really mad, then she saw the new boy coming over the hill.

She dropped her bucket and went over to see. Hakim walked fast, and by the time she caught up, Hakim and the new boy were already talking.

"Jonas, right?" Hakim asked."Your mom's always making food for the orphans?With lots of boiled cabbage?"

Jonas ducked his head and nodded, staring down at the ground.

"What are you doing here?" Hakim asked. "Why are you digging?"He wasn't angry, Fatima could tell by his confused.

Fatima smiled at the new boy, Jonas. He was a bit smaller than Hakim but bigger than her, and white, with red hair.

"Jenny sent me," he said.

Hakim rolled his eyes. He didn't like the whole Jenny-business.

Jonas dug his toe in the dirt. "I want to help. You know," he pointed at the hole, "dig."

"Dig for what?"

"Are you snooping or something?" Chris walked up behind Fatima. "A tattletale? Gonna run tell Mommy and Daddy, and score points with Jesus?"

"No." Jonas shook his head, keeping his eyes on his feet. "I...wanna help," he mumbled. "Dig."

"Why?" Hakim asked again. "Why do you want to dig?" He frowned.

"What makes you think we want you help, anyways?" Chris stepped forward.

Hakim put his hand out, stopping Chris. "No, he can stay. If he wants to dig, he can stay."

"Oh yeah?" Chris asked. He turned to Hakim. "Who put you in charge?"

"You want to be in charge? Go dig your own hole."

Chris glared. He jerked his hand like he was about to hit Hakim, but stopped. "Fine. But if Jesus-boy tattles, don't blame me." He walked off.

"Fine!" Hakim shouted. He turned to Jonas. "What are you waiting for? Go dig!"

It was really annoying how Hakim had longer legs than Fatima. Unfair. She was always running to catch up. Like now, when he saw Jonas walking home. He went way on ahead, really fast. She couldn't keep up.

Fatima dashed down the road, finally reaching them. They were already talking, and Fatima caught the tail of Hakim's sentence.

"Maybe I like boiled cabbage," he said, which was stupid. He _hated_ boiled cabbage, even now, after Jesus made everyone like vegetables. He'd sooner pick leaves off a tree for dinner than eat in the same house as boiled cabbage. Fatima knew. They'd done that once or twice.

Jonas looked straight ahead. "I don't see why you have to get on me just because I have parents. I mean, why are all of you digging?"

"My mom and dad are in the pit," Hakim answered. "Just about everyone in my family, except for me and Fatima. They're in there, and they're on fire until I dig them out."

Jonas turned his head and looked at Hakim a moment. His lip wobbled like he was about to cry, but he bit it and kept walking.

No one said anything for a while. It was easier for Fatima to keep up, because Jonas was smaller, and he took slow, trudging steps that kicked up dust.

After a while, Hakim said, "You don't have to tell me. I'm not gonna make you. You can still come dig if you want. But I really want to know why."

Jonas. "I had...you remember when everyone was getting burned up in the sun, and no one could go outside?"

Fatima didn't, but Hakim must have, because he nodded.

"Well," said Jonas. "I had a big brother. Danny. A teenager. He had a dog, Max. Nobody in my family was Christians, then. One day the sun went weird, and set people on fire. Do you remember that? Everyone had to stay inside."

Hakim nodded. Fatima didn't remember it, but she thought she'd had to be inside a lot.

"It was nighttime, and we put cloth and wood over all the windows to keep the light out, and hid in my parent's bedroom, because it had hardly any windows."

"We hid in the basement," Hakim said. "It was dark. Fatima was just a baby. Mommy had a radio. She told me to watch out for spiders and cockroaches, and make sure they didn't crawl on Fatima."

"We were supposed to bring the dog in," Jonas said."I think I was supposed I forgot, and Mom and Dad were busy, and nobody brought the dog the sun came up."

He took a deep breath. His hands balled up into fists. "I heard him out in the yard. Barking, then kind of whimpering. Then...screaming, sort of. Like how he'd yelp when he was hurt, but worse. Horrible. It went on forever. I wanted to got get him. But Dad said no, and Mom wouldn't let go of me."

He stopped, and took a few more breaths before speaking again. "Danny was bigger. And fast. He went out after Max. Dad ran out after him, but he must have made it outside before Dad could stop him. I didn't see. Mom was holding on to me in the bedroom."

He stopped again, and wiped his eyes with his balled-up hands. "I didn't see, but I could hear him. Max had just stopped screaming. For just a second, everything was quiet, and I thought Danny had saved Max. But then Danny...started...screaming..." He pressed his hands against his eyes, and took a deep shaky breath.

"Dad came back afterwards. He wouldn't talk. Mom took one look at him and started crying. I wanted to know where Danny was. Neither one of them would talk. They became Christians just after that. Because God burned Danny up. And I heard he's still...burning..." He started crying, grinding his fists against his eyes like he was mad at something.

Fatima hung back a moment, then went over and patted him on the elbow. "It's okay," she said. "We'll dig him out. We'll dig everyone out."

When they got to Jonas's house, Hakim waved and led Fatima off. She knew he'd been making it up about the boiled cabbage.

"Listen," he told her, when they'd gotten a bit away. "Don't go around telling everyone about what Jonas said."

"Why not?"

"Because."

"Because what?"

"Because..." Hakim frowned again, and waved his hand for a bit. "Just because. Don't. It's not cool, okay? He didn't tell everyone. Don't say anything."

"Okay." Fatima nodded. She didn't see why. If everyone knew about Jonas's brother, they'd understand. But Hakim knew these things, so she kept her mouth shut.


	19. Chapter 14 - Time Lapse

Youtube: pNqT48AWVjw

* * *

Reconnecting with Sergei was a moment of quiet joy, the only noise about it being the you-have-email beep from the terminal in Cendrillon's room. Indonesia was no longer hanging loose; the formerly Muslim country was now, as were more and more parts of the world, hanging at the end of a long and frail gossamer strand that yet grew stronger every day. Over the seasons, he had written her about life in the tropical nation, work done and to be done there - a veritable recolonization effort - by both missionary teams and cabals from The Other Light, one of which had ultimately been responsible for getting Net access to the hamlet that Sergei was in. Cendrillon noted with a bit of satisfaction that the canopy-boat repeater idea had been tried and may even be deployed commercially some day. Sergei's attitude had hardened somewhat, as far as she could tell: with the bulk of the reconstruction work done, he was anxious to either get back to Greater Jerusalem and resume aerospace work, or go anywhere else where he might be able to. The few "I miss you" that the two exchanged were buried in spirited argument about this or that technical minutia and low-resolution scans of project ideas and pictures from either's home.

* * *

"So, after simulations, vehicle mass 2.67 tons, propellant mass 4.18 tons, total height is 10.8m, diameter 1.5m. There won't be any room for much life support, and, well, easiest thing for sanitation would be a diaper."

"It's actually not that big. We've built bigger sailboats."

* * *

The list of knowns was starkly written on a blackboard. Canopy: average height approximately 70km, rotationally locked to the planet, lower layer water, upper layer ice. The "budget" number and "estimated costs" column made one thing clear: they would have one shot at this.

The flight envelope was extremely simple: fire the big solid fuel booster, break off it with the capsule thrusters, and let it burn itself apart. The actual vessel, after much historical and technical arguing, looked like a scaled-down Mercury capsule with a Vostok equipment module under it, three small gimballed nozzles protruding from it.

"Seventy kilomters, that's forty three miles right?"

"Point five. But, this is the space program, we use metric. Confusion between units would be catastrophic."

"So what happens after the splash-in?"

"The capsule will float, it should go up by itself. Ice will be breached by shaped charges on the nose."

"Isn't it cheaper to send me up with scuba diving stuff? The capsule's electronics are really simple, they can live in a pressurized box. That way we don't have to pressurize the capsule itself."

"Maybe. But that's already how you come down - flood the empty fuel tank to reduce buoyancy."

"The pseudosatellite guys have had good luck with impellers..."

"That'd need solar panels, a much bigger battery... too much weight. Fortunately, the launch vehicle is simple. We have two options - three stage or two stage. Basically, two small solid fuel rockets or a single larger one."

"What's cheapest?"

"Having two small lower stages would let us build a third one and perform at least one dry test for-"

"What's cheapest."

"We'd just build the large one and hope it performs well on the first try after we do scale model testing."

"It'll have to do."

* * *

"You're back!"

"Yes, they let me come back while I wait for the paperwork for my first 'real' job to go through. Apparently someone finally noticed that -urk-"

Sergei's explanation about how various territorial government were encouraging believers to get into the boatellite business, and he'd been asked to sign on as junior engineer for one of the new companies, would have to wait after the hug. Cendrillon had developed quite a bit of muscle from the carpentry and metalwork necessary to build the capsule; he wasn't sure whether to compliment her on it or not.

"… yeah, well, it happens! You on the other hand got a serious tan!"

"Unavoidable, really. But in fairness I think some outdoor work has done me good."

"Aw, so we can't lock you in a closet and make you do math anymore?"

"Actually… I'd like you and Mercy to help me not do that to myself. Promise?"

"Sure! But we do need your brain. We've done our best, but… well, half our stuff so far is eyeballed. You can actually figure out how to set it up properly, make it efficient."

"Where did you set up this time?"

"A bit further out, about a horizon away from the COT campus. I'm only working part time now, I don't know what schedule Elianto sorted out but he's there almost as often as I am, and Mercy shows up when she can."

* * *

"All the descent controls are mechanical, so if the capsule gets flooded, you can still make it home. We're going to aim the booster straight up. Then you'll have about two minutes to use the differential thrusters to kill any horizontal velocity. Then, splash in - assuming physics still works in the canopy - and either float to the top or use the thrusters to push the capsule there. Then, breach the ice. After extravehicular activity, either flooding the propellant tank or flipping the capsule and thrusting backwards should work. Once out of the canopy, there's going to be about three minutes of microgravity for experimenting with. Then, release the drogue at 20km up and the main parachute at 5km up."

"Abort options... Well, if the main booster decides to blow up on launch, you die. If the booster breaks up early, you trip the explosive bolts, push horizontally with the capsule engine, and deploy chutes when you're clear. If you end up spiraling out of control, same deal. If the capsule won't come back down, you can yank off the door panel and use it as a heat shield, try to angle yourself for a glide, and open your own parachute when you're in the right altitude band. If the pressure suit doesn't do its job… not much to do there. I guess you can wade in the canopy water, get your head up quickly, take a few pictures that way, and then come back down. For everything else… at this point it's unknown unknowns, really. Frostbite, for example…"

Given the budget and time restrictions, having any sort of contingency plans at all was a luxury, and they all knew it. Sergei gave Cendrillon an eighty percent chance of getting up there and back down without losing her life, plus five percent for her optimism, maybe.

* * *

"So… You want to take out all your back pay."

"Yep."

"I'll need to call a parent or guardian."

"Nope. Here, these are pictures of me celebrating my 100th with my parents and some of my cousins."

"But I have your birthday at-"

"I was born during the Tribulation. I think it's safe to say that Carpathia's government wasn't particularly truthful when it comes to birth certificates. Or much of anything else."

"… That's fair. Well, happy late birthday then! So… quitting COT and buying a homestead, I guess? Who's the lucky guy?"

"Homestead… Uh, more of a pied-a-l'air."

"Ah, I see." The COT clerk clearly didn't. "So, that's how much you're owed… and which church do I make the tithe check to?"

"Still me. I need every mite. It's actually a faith-based project." Cendrillon pocketed the two checks and smiled to herself – she once had caught Cameron reminiscing, and listened in until he spilled the beans about some fairly egregious truth-bending he did when interrogated by Carpathia's goons. She figured she was doing almost as well now. Besides, right now the booster and control surfaces very much qualified as a faith-based project.

* * *

"We still don't have the money, as it stands right now. To make that worse, some of the chemicals we need, people will just refuse to sell us. The difference between a space rocket and a missile with a warhead is… just not much."

"The design has 15 kilograms of spare mass. We can auction that off on the Net and in newsletters. Surely someone will want to run their own experiments, or leave a plaque, or something like that?"

"We could also auction off the capsule's name."

"Oh... That's a good point. I wanted to call her Pourquoi Pas? after the French arctic exploration ships."

"That's not bad actually. I guess the capsule will spend a lot of time in water, so a ship's name is-"

"-not important. If I have to call this Capsule McCapsuleFace because somebody pays for that, I will."

"We've got to spin-stabilize the booster if it has any hope of flying straight up. And we'll have to launch sometime where there's no wind."

"... how do I not lose my lunch?"

"Start getting used to it. Hmm, training... More than a centrifuge, it'd look like... an office chair spun by a motor."

Cendrillon's face foreshadowed a lot of motion sickness. "I love this plan! I'm excited to be a part of it!"

* * *

"The crowdfunding didn't go very well. We got some donations from former NASA and Roscosmos people, a few schools signed up for ping-pong-ball experiments, and some people bought plaques to send up, usually with a prayer or with the name of a loved one. But we're still short."

By far the biggest funding member of this project had turned out to be The Other Light, if nothing else because they had agreed to provide the solid fuel for the booster. Cendrillon told herself that if they absolutely had to train themselves to make explosives, this was by far the most responsible use of the chemicals, save for the canopy-boat radio repeaters. A good thing about all this is that there had been some cross-pollination between this project and that one; if the Millennial Kingdom had a functioning patent system, the licensing agreemenets would almost have covered the missing money. As it was, most intellectual property agreements were on the honor system. Cendrillon was dimly aware of cases of unbelieving businesses refusing to honor shop-rights agreements with Christian designers, or Christian factories abusing the "unequally yoked" legal clause to terminate an agreement after they'd gotten the IP they wanted from uneblievers, but didn't want to get bogged down in legal arguments since the entire legal status of this project was nebulous at best.

From Cendrillon's perspective, the hard part had been to avoid turning this into a TOL project, although "The Outer Light" was the largest-type item on the side of the booster. COT was next. Both names and banners would burn up on ascent anyway; if the booster looked like a Formula One car, covered in sponsor logos, for some reason it made the whole thing look a bit more real. Even so, a big chunk of the unskilled work had been done by TOL kids, simply because they had volunteered and had nobody around to deny them permission to help.

The ship was ready - it was simply the ship; nobody had yet met the minimum bid for naming it - but most of the instruments to be installed topside were still missing, and there was no money to buy or make them with. Cendrillon had spent a few hours reading up on forensic science, and was well aware of the fact that the Glorious Appearing had meant an abrupt 180 on it, almost as much as paleontology - the trend away from witness testimony and towards instrumental evidence had been completely reverted in the Millennial Kingdom. Nevertheless, she wanted to beam down and bring back as much data as possible. In case I don't make it back, she told herself, at least there'll be pictures.

* * *

The final vehicle looked almost, but not quite, entirely unlike Sergei's original simulation. The "big dumb booster" was an aluminum tube with proportions derived roughly from the Japanese Mu launch vehicle, with lovingly handcrafted wooden fins and a balsa shroud to cover the Vostok-alike second stage and equipment module which would provide fine tuning of the final reach height. Above, the conical capsule had been finished to resemble a Mercury vessel more than it actually did. All in all, it looked like a kitbash of a half dozen model rocket sets, except one-to-one scale. The conical capsule and the slight bump of equipment module shroud made the launch vehicle look remarkably phallic, something Cendrillon couldn't unsee after overhearing the second or third comment made by the build crew after final assembly. She was thinking more asparagus, but knew a losing battle when she saw one - this rocket had been built by teenagers after all.

* * *

"That's… pretty serious. Looks like shark fins."

"That's what I was going for. They'll hold you steady, you'll see."

With good epoxy and Elianto's skilled hands, it was pretty incredible how much could be made out of wood. "After all" he said "it's the original composite material. Either God created it pretty much perfect, or it had a billion years of evolution to get good at standing up and holding weight."

"Which do you think is true?"

"Don't know. Don't really care, honestly. That's for people like you and Sergei and Chaim to figure out. The conference / debate / shouting match thing was kind of fun to watch, though. Which do you think is true?"

Elianto was talking about the Chaim Rozenweig and Eric Hovind vs. Phil Mason debate that had taken place on TV a few months earlier; as they often did, it degenerated into a shouting match when Mason pointed out that the global earthquake and sky canopy had suspiciously made evidence for an old universe impossible to get to. The only reason why the broadcast made the news was that a TOL cell had sabotaged the moderator's desk so that any attempts to mute Phil resulted in Chaim and Eric being muted instead; rather than a short sermon by the distinguished former botanist, the programme had ended with the evolutionist pushing forward his blog's Web address and then an abrupt cut to commercial.

"I'm giving God the benefit of the doubt. If He can flatten the Earth, He can make the Grand Canyon meander without having to wait for it to happen naturally. Technically, we don't even know whether anything outside of the canopy still exists. That's why I'm going to go find out."

"I'd have liked to see the Grand Canyon. Other than pictures, I mean. You're lucky that you remember the night sky."

"...You're lucky that you've never seen it. That way you don't have to miss it."

"From what the older folk and you say" - Elianto was interrupted by a playful poke on the shoulder - "the world used to be a bigger place."

Cendrillon sighed. "The world's still the same. There's just… less in it."

* * *

"I thought you said you'd never be a seamstress."

"This is a pressure suit. If I'm wearing it, I might as well make it, and… well it turns out I'm decent at it, leave it alone, okay?"

"Okay, okay!"

The pressure suit had started life as two scuba diving suits, one slightly larger than the other, with an insulating layer between the two. And it's still more or less what it looked like; Cendrillon's work with stitching and epoxy only showed in the details. Since it was intended to be a very tight fit and replace atmospheric pressure, putting it on took the better part of an hour even with Mercy's help.

"How's it look?"

"It looks more Flash Gordony than the real ones. Looks pretty good on you, though."

"My advantage is that I have a bunch of water available right there to help with the sealing. And yes, it's thicker than it looks, since it's three layers."

"...That's just the problem. It looks good on you. I can see how it'd make just about anyone else look fat. That means that you haven't been eating properly. Cindy, are you anorexic? You can tell me."

"...No, I..."

Mercy only knew about anorexia from books, and wasn't entirely sure what signs to look for, but she did recognize the signs of something else.

"...You've been skipping meals to sell them?"

"No! I just – Look, a couple of TOL kids showed up to help. I'm not gonna turn them away. But, they don't really have any food security either, and they're too busy helping out to go forage, so –"

Mercy sighed. "Okay, got it. Care package coming up as soon as I'm done with work tomorrow."

* * *

"Yes, I think I can provide you with the camera equipment you need. A 70mm ruggedized camera, high contrast film, and check this thing out - a self contained Webcam that doesn't need a desktop computer. Serial output, so you can send your pictures home via standard modem link. It's about a hundred years old, but still works perfectly."

The fancy film stuff was gravy, really, but the digital camera was exactly what Cendrillon had hoped for: in case she made it up but not down, some pictures would still reach Earth. The problem was being able to afford them; as it was, most of her crew was on two meals a day (again) and some of them had swallowed their pride and started going to COT to see if the school could spare cafeteria leftovers. "Yes, this is perfect. What will it cost me?"

"We both know you're broke."

"So what do you want, Mr..."

"Tarl. Tarl Cabot."

Cendrillon tilted her head. The guy was obviously younger than her - he had to be, she knew for a fact that she was one of the first children who had been conceived after the Rapture and survived the Tribulation- but vigorous physical exercise combined with some signs of alcohol and drug abuse made him look considerably older. Cendrillon was just telling herself that the man had some amount of greasy charm, but changed her mind instantly. Tarl Cabot? Really? That's what your mom calls you? Cendrillon bit her tongue and blinked twice.

"Right. So what would you like, sir?"

"Hmm. I think... A photoshoot. Of you, in that nice skintight rubber thing you'll be wearing for the mission, posing atop of the rocket."

Heh. That was actually somewhat flattering. Cendrillon nodded. Her gangly, angular figure didn't exactly turn heads; she'd had more than a few moments of jealousy and self-doubt because of it over the course of her life. If that's what it took to get people interested in spaceflight...

"And then, of course, one without the skintight rubber thing. And maybe a model of the rocket, eh? Yes, I think so. Oh, and of course, exclusive distribution rights." Tarl made an explicit gesture when mentioning the rocket model.

Cendrillon froze for a moment. That was a bit of a line to cross for her.

"Oh, and a third one in my studio, I think one of my boys really would like to play space alien. We can get a whole first contact thing going for our next spread, dig?"

"Er…" Make that a double line.

The man was leaning towards her by now, one hand pressed against the bulkhead, right above her shoulder. Cendrillon suppressed the instinct to just knee the guy where the sun doesn't shine. There they were, on her launch ramp, next to her rocket, surrounded by her crew, and yet this guy had all the power.

Moment of truth. Yet another. Probably not the last. _I am ready to die in a fireball and spend the rest of eternity in it for this_ , she reminded herself. This is nothing in comparison.

"... okay. I'll do it."

The two were interrupted by a coarse shout from a voice much like Cendrillon's.

"Hey, lay off Cindy, will you?"

Both turned. Nicolette, Cendrillon's cousin and confirmed member of The Other Light, must have been on rotation to drop off some parts. She and Cendrillon clearly shared a lot of genes, although the younger girl was shorter and curvier. High heels and a touch of expert makeup more than made up for the height and perceived age difference.

"We just made a deal. What's it to you?"

Nicolette quickly took measure of what was going on, and answered confidently. "I'd like to do the second and third shoots instead of my cousin, Tarl. I look better without a spacesuit on, no offense, and I'm a lot more... flexible. Do my hair like Cindy's and nobody will be able to tell the difference."

Tarl took a look up and down the two girls. "Right, I see your point. Same price?"

"Yep. Who knows, I may want more work after, on different terms of course."

"... Heh, why not. Deal."

The three-way handshake looked more like a game of patty cake in progress in the photo, but it was how "wayward children" sealed their deals in the Millennial Kingdom.

When Tarl and his cologne had left, Cendrillon asked Nicolette why.

"Honestly? You're fantastic at getting a crew to work together, Cindy, but... you doing explicit photoshoots? I bet you're still a virgin! You'd do a poor job, and that's the kind of guy who will use any excuse to not keep a deal. And then nothing gets done."

"Whereas you..."

"Everyone of us has a talent. You... you get stuff going. Into space, apparently. Lothair is really good at playing mafia boss. That meathead Ignace is good at blowing stuff up. I'm good at... getting what The Other Light needs without anything blowing up. Like you said that one time, there doesn't always have to be a fight. Guess what most boys would rather do than fight."

Nicolette did not expect the sincere hug. "Thank you."

* * *

"Lift your leg a little more! Look up! Smile! Tilt your head a little… " Cendrillon had planned to do a shoot with the rocket anyway, just... not with two clumps of cotton stuck to her chest under the pressure suit. Good way to test the camera gear, she guessed. Smarmy as he was, Tarl had delivered.

"It'll do! We're done here." The second shoot done, the TOL media troupe turned over the camera equipment and left with Nicolette in tow. That was all they needed.

Cendrillon looked at the three dozen or so people who had stuck with this project to the end. She wished she had something tangible to offer - the original plan had been to keep a bit of funds aside for an after-launch party, but that hadn't lasted long.

"Blue team, time for the last once-over! Red team, get some rest, you'll need it tomorrow. Last step, fueling up the hydrazine!"

"You gonna get some rest too?" Sergei asked.

"No, I'm helping with the once-over."

"No, you're getting some sleep. The tanks have no double layer, we've got to launch within twelve hours of fueling. You're the one who has to be fresh on launch."

"... Ack that, Control."

"Sweet dreams, Flight."

In the "barracks" shack, Cendrillon took a few moments to herself before taking the padding out of the pressure suit and getting ready for bed. Maybe next time she'll incorporate them in the suit design… Nah.


	20. Chapter 15 - Ascension

Youtube: 3JzZk8wzhAw

Just slightly behind schedule and just slightly over budget, the morning of the launch had finally come.

There had been no real thought given to reusing any of the infrastructure, although by force of necessity, most of it was mounted on trailers or inside caravans and RVs; the launch tower was an exception, having been put together out of wood and scaffolding. The launch vehicle - eventually, after a reverse auction someone'd bought the right to name her the Falcon, and a stylized logo had been stenciled on the side. The first spaceship of the Millennial Kingdom was as ready to go as it would ever be.

The day was cloudy, a rarity that some of the believing volunteers found to be a bad omen; the air was heavy and still with the promise of rain, and high winds from the west were predicted for the following few days. While this might make recovering the capsule more daunting, it minimized the chances of landing in the Mediterranean (the capsule was waterproof, but the systems weren't designed to handle salt water) and allowed for a modicum of steerability during descent. Of course, this meant that for easiest conditions the launch would have to happen before the wind started to pick up.

Sergei was hyperfocused enough that everyone near him assumed he'd taken amphetamines. He didn't need them.

Cendrillon, the only person who'd gotten a full night's sleep, had no big speech to make - she told everybody that she felt antsy about the whole thing, and to please let her abuse her pilot privilege by hogging one of the porta-potties before launch. Nobody had a problem with it.

More than half the crew shuffled about in the too-early morning; they'd worked until scant hours before to fill the liquid fuel tank on the equipment module, and while they wanted to be awake for the launch they were in no condition to help. With mumbled goodmornings, they sat behind the blast shield, where a screen had been set up to show telemetry and, while it was in range, video. The relatively few people who had a job to do right before the launch were more alert, and going about their tasks.

Cendrillon got her suit on - without the extra chest padding, after a brief debate with her own vanity - and stood in front of everyone who wasn't busy with time-sensitive preflight checks. She bowed deeply to the thirty or so people waiting on the improvised bleacher. "I'm going. I hope to come back in a couple of days. We all know why we're here, so... there isn't much to say. Just - thank you. Some of us did this for the glory of God. Some of us did this for the glory of Lucifer. Some of us did this for the glory of Humanity. Some of us did this for science. I'm just happy we got this far and were able to work together. I don't particularly deserve to be the first to go up, but... I definitely don't deserve to be the last. If this doesn't work, please, try, try again."

A few arms went up to the sky. Someone - Sergei noted who and made sure that they had no further duty - took a swig of moonshine. Ignace and Lothair weren't there; Cindy's cousin had insisted on operational security and were watching the launch from a second telemetry station. The last Sergei had talked to them was to chastise them for trying to get Cendrillon to get drunk at least once... less than 72 hours before launch.

Elianto was perched on top of one of the RVs, hugging his knees and looking up. The sky was grey. He sent out a silent prayer. Before being a preacher, Jesus had been a craftsman - a woodworker, like himself. Surely He could appreciate a job well done. Aerodynamic parts, dampers... Unlike Cendrillon, Elianto genuinely hoped that the first space capsule to have to use any sort of wooden parts would also be the last.

Cendrillon climbed up the gantry and waved. She'd have to seal herself in; since she would have to do it again on reentry, it was best if she was the last person to touch the hatch.

"All right, external power disconnected, go/no go poll. I want to hurry up lest we start getting crosswind, so raise your hand for go and only call for no go. Telemetry? Timer? QAM? FIDO? Reaction wheels?"

"Hold, still spinning up... Okay, go."

"Air traffic? Guidance? Booster? Right, final countdown, 10 seconds..."

A guitar riff almost, but not quite, drowned out Sergei's counting.

"Poehali!"

* * *

Rayford's car stopped at the first of the shacks on the path to the launch ramp. A boy in a homemade black and red uniform was apparently in charge of deciding who could come any closer. Rayford would soon see about that.

"Do you know who I am, boy?"

"You're not wearing a hard hat. Here, take one from the pile."

"I am Rayford Steele!"

"Thanks for coming to see the launch, Captain. Please put on a hard hat."

"I come with an instruction from the regional conclave. We've come to the conclusion that this is too dangerous to crew and bystanders - all of you are still kids, after all. This was all done with essentially no adult supervision. Unacceptable! The launch is scrubbed."

"Sorry, sir. We can't do that. You have to put on a hard hat, for your own safety."

"I said this launch is canceled, by the authority of the Temple! No excuses!"

"We can't do that because we launched five seconds ago." The boy pointed at the rocket plume ascending.

Rayford glared. Just in time to make his answer moot, the noise from the booster drowned everything out for a half minute. The boy and Rayford looked up. Below, the mostly wooden launch tower was finishing burning down and being extinguished on schedule.

Then, a bolt of lightning from a nearby cloud struck the capsule, earthing itself through the launch plume. The kid immediately got a barked alarm on his headphone.

"What the - Sir? You really, really want to put on a hard hat if you're going to stay around here."

Rayford did, barked back at the kid to get on the car, and drove on where the launch tower was burning.

"Any injuries?"

* * *

"Whoa! What was that? I've lost half of my telemetry!"

"Lightning strike. Tower extra crispy. Attitude holding?"

"I-I think so!" During the 'rinse cycle' spin caused by the solid booster's angled fins, Cendrillon's plan had been to close her eyes, hang on tight, and bear it until she had control. The external camera could clean up the ascent video, but she had no intention to have to clean up the inside of the capsule.

"We can't get telemetry from you. And without directional antennas we can't figure out your horizontal velocity!"

That was a problem. Without keeping her capsule's horizontal velocity synchronized with the canopy's, she would effectively crash-land into an upside-down ocean even if her vertical velocity was spot on. Trying to glide in, with no air, was an impossibility. The mission plan had an abort option for this: let the first stage burn itself out, turn the capsule around, and burn sideways to allow for more time for the atmosphere to slow the capsule down. It would make for a few minutes of genuinely fun ride, and wasn't dangerous, but it still meant mission failure.

"Stand by, we're trying to sort it out."

A small part of Cendrillon's mind wondered if it would've been cheating to pray. Another small part noted that the lightning strike happened at a bit too convenient a time to be a coincidence. Msot of her mind however was still on the job of holding on to her seat as it spun like mad.

After a few long moments, Mercy's voice on the radio. "As soon as you stop spinning, wire peg SCE to AUX."

Three loud bangs jostled the capsule, and Cendrillon suddenly felt vertigo from weightlessness and the mad spin starting to slow down. Booster expended. Was it over already? She flipped the SCE power switch to the auxilliary battery. On the simple readout that had been built into the capsule, one readout went back to showing numbers rather than a strings of zeroes.

"We have horizontal speed readings for you again, Falcon! Deviation detected. To correct, angle thrust to..."

Mercy smiled to herself. This situation had been simulated early on in testing, and she was the one to work it out. The emergency battery would be able to run the antennas for the few minutes it had to, if it had nothing else to do. Sergei's big hand came down on her shoulder in an awkward but heartfelt side-hug.

"Mercy, you are one steely-eyed missile woman."

* * *

The second stage was not powerful enough to lift itself from the ground: it wasn't intended to. Once the big solid booster was spent, Cendrillon's velocity could only decrease. Rather, its job was to perfectly fine tune the final height, so as to execute a perfect splash-in on the canopy, and kill any horizontal velocity. For this reason, it was effectively a hybrid between an Apollo command module and a Vostok instrument module and retrorocket. By pulsing the three engines, Cendrillon could adjust her attitude. The Falcon envelope made room for only a few seconds of microgravity, but by carefully pulsing the small engines, she could adjust how much gravity she would experience for the next few minutes. Compared to the earlier experience of being thrown in a washing machine, the feeling - not enough freefall to induce sickness, not bumpy enough to cause vertigo, just a general sensation of lightness as the capsule slowly decelerated - was comforting, like swimming in air. Cendrillon narrated her feelings, wishing for a larger capsule.

"Horizontal velocity reading, please."

"Three point two meters per second WCS, Falcon. Recommend you line up vertical."

The water-and-ice canopy that lensed the Sun and Moon's light to create an eternal day diffused enough of it to remove the darkening of the sky as altitude increased. This had been predicted, then observed during boatellite launches; Cendrillon took a few pictures and commented on it anyway. While a little disappointing, it showed that the prep work had been on point. "If we want to see the stars again, we shall have to earn it the hard way!"

"Copy that, Falcon. Keep vertical, your HV is two-point-four. Hey, there's a few grown-ups on the launch ramp."

"CAPCOM, Are they mad?"

"A bit. Mostly worried."

"I can see waves on the bottom of the canopy! Can't be wind... Must be thermal expansion. It's a deep blue underneath... it looks really deep."

"Remember, it should be pitch black outside, it can't be that deep or we wouldn't be getting any light at all down here. Can you send out a depth gauge before you dive?"

"Hang on, on manual for final approach, talk later."

"Roger that, Falcon. Wha - Captain Steele, I mean no offense but you are distracting us and interfering with flight operations, right now Cindy cannot be distracted. Please go home!"

* * *

The capsule hit the inner surface of the canopy with just a bit of lateral velocity, jostling Cendrillon like a low-speed collision. Quickly, she opened the throttles on all three thrusters to full: enough of the capsule's buoyant section had to be in the water to pull the whole thing up, lest it fall down again. Boatellites had solved that problem by impellers and bladders, but the capsule was too large for finesse - and besides, the idea was to pierce the canopy, not perch upon it. Cendrillon heard the bubbles as the thrusters pushed past the water surface, cut throttle, and let the capsule climb up. The capsule's nose was armored; hopefully the momentum gained from the small craft floating up like a bubble would be sufficient to pierce the ice.

The audio and external telemetry cut off; water is exceedingly good at blocking radio. For a few moments, Cendrillon was alone. Probably the most alone person alive, she thought. How did the command module pilots feel when going around the Moon?

A loud thunk, a structural groan. The capsule had hit the inner surface of the ice. Cendrillon pulled a string, and the capsule released a plumb bob with a wire, the onsite antenna.

"CAPCOM, this is Falcon, I've impacted the ice. No loss of pressurization. Outside pressure is... moving around a bit. Looks like it's just a few meters of water, no appreciable salt content or the pitot tube would've shorted out."

"Cindy, are you okay?"

"Doing well so far. Didn't break through the ice, but may have cracked it. I'm checking watertightness on the science equipment before I open the hatch. Did anyone get hurt from the lightning?"

"No, we're all right. Hakim's ears are still ringing, so we sent him back to COT with Captain Steele." Sergei found no need to mention the superficial burns that the lightning's shock wave had caused by scattering cinders all around.

Playing on Cendrillon's name and the fact that the tower fire had caused the vitrified sand around the launch to turn grey like the Moon used to look, Nicolette was doing one of the agreed-upon photoshoots; at least it was with the mock spacesuit on.

"We're having a BBQ at the launch area. Bruschette and grilled peppers."

During the brief radio silence, Mercy had told Sergei that there no broadcast television station had agreed to repeat the launch live, although some had asked for footage to use for a highlight for the local news... maybe The Other Light's pirate radio and TV, of course, was another story, but it didn't look like much official recognition was going to come this way.

"We'll just have to keep circulating the tapes, I guess."

* * *

There had been no time, money, or mass allowance to implement an airlock; the air tanks that kept Cendrillon breathing were also big enough to flush water out of the capsule... once or twice.

Cendrillon pulled the trigger that fired the breaching charges - a fancy term for four zip guns built into the nosecone, firing shotgun slugs - and waited for the capsule to settle. The front camera had developed a big scratch on the lens as a result of the touch-in, but showed black rather than blue or white, while giving enough of an image to tell her that it hadn't just conked out.

The flight procedure called for sending an electrical current through the nosecone to melt the ice further, but having lost the main battery Cendrillon didn't want to risk it. The camera tripod had been designed to double as an ice pick, so that's what she would use.

"CAPCOM, the primary battery is still in one piece, it might have enough juice left to soften the ice."

"We're getting a temperature reading of about triple point. Recommend you don't. Break it while it's brittle, then soften to put the dilator in."

"Thank you. About to pop the hatch, signing off until I can reconnect the radio."

"Good luck."

Cendrillon had been scuba diving only a handful of times in her life; she didn't know if this one would be different. She took a few deep breaths in and out to hyperoxygenate slightly, put her facemask on, and let the water in the capsule. A few of the systems that were only used in ascent hadn't been waterproofed to save weight, and shorted out on schedule. Cendrillon felt a shot of cold hit her with the water rushing in, and clung to the capsule seat for a moment, letting the fear wash over her. "I will not fear, fear is the mind killer..."

She let her body heat soak the wetsuit just as the icy water had, opened the hatch fully, and swam out. She'd seen documentaries of people diving under ice, but the sheer vastness of the canopy left her breathless for a moment. Hanging onto the capsule - there was enough buoyancy in the fuel tanks, now mostly empty, to keep it in place - Cendrillon dared to look down; the inner surface of the water still gave a blurry image of Greater Jerusalem's green, the small pockets of desert yellows, and the Live Sea and Mediterranean cyan. She was tempted to take a picture poking out of the bottom. Later, maybe - now the mission.

Tap, tap, tap, methodically, all around the capsule's nose, she broke the ice. It was thicker than she and Sergei had expected, maybe half a meter, which forced her to do multiple passes, breaking off a chunk and pushing it to the side. Fortunately, the breaching slugs had done a significant part of the work, producing cracks that she could widen. Cendrillon's breathing system was still connected to the capsule's air tanks; each full circle, she had to turn around. After a long hour of work, the capsule tried to move upwards.

She was tired. It would cost her about a fourth of her air supply, but repressurizing the capsule quickly would drastically increase its buoyancy... Cendrillon disconnected the breathing tube, switched to the suit's small tank - set timer, twenty minutes - and connected it back inwards to the capsule's flush inlet. This had only been tested with a scale model; getting crushed between the capsule's conical front and the ice was a real risk. Cendrillon swam backwards a little and used the tripod / icepick to poke the valve into opening.

The water was flushed out of the capsule in seconds - watching it through the porthole reminded Cendrillon of a side load washing machine that had too much detergent in it. With a somewhat disturbing metallic groan, the capsule pushed through the ice canopy, breaking a few chunks around it small enough for Cendrillon to move aside by hand but big enough to let her make her own emersion.

Quickly, she closed the flush valve on the capsule - a glance at the gauge told her she'd lost more air than she thought, maybe a third. Climbing the side, Cendrillon had to resist a powerful urge to take her mask off once getting on solid ice.

The top of the canopy was white-bluish ice, shimmering gently with a bit of iridescence from absorbed cosmic dust. From the outside, the Earth must've looked like a giant snowball, as if locked in a severe ice age. A quick glance at her own shadow told Cendillon that the sun was roughly behind her.

Cendrillon looked up.

"My God. It's full of stars."

The black expanse was enough to give her vertigo for a moment, as if the void of space would suck her up. The sensation went away as soon as her eyes adjusted. The Milky Way, clear as she'd never seen it as a little girl. The Big Dipper, still giving her true north!

"It's all still here!"

Don't look directly at the Sun without a visor, she reminded herself. Mission planning required getting the radio out of the capsule, setting up the solar panels, and taking pictures. Cendrillon sat on the ice, overwhelmed, looking up, trying to take it all in.

A whole universe to explore. There - a movement! Some of the old satellites were still up there, circling the Earth...

Venus. The evening star. The morning star. Lucifer, in latin. She wondered for a moment if Satan was on the surface, burning with sulfurous gases. That'd explain a lot of things, wouldn't it? Plenty of brimstone down there... No fire, though, although the high temperatures were there, so probably not. Happy to have quickly triangulated the planet, Cendrillon waved anyway.

Mars. A pink dot, moving ever so slowly. Just before the Rapture, the Americans had managed to send a remote controlled rover there...

Cendrillons' eyes stopped darting around and settled on the pointillist draping of the Milky Way. Mindful to not look directly at the Sun, she leaned back against the capsule.

For a moment, it was all still and silent, enough for Cendrillon to hear her own blood flow between heartbeat. I made it. I broke the canopy and I'm alive. Nobody can take that away.

"Bien tot. Time to get to work." The gravity was effectively same of that of the Earth, take a few percent, since Cendrillon was on a tidally locked surface rather than orbiting it, but she still preferred to move slowly. No mistakes now.

* * *

Below, the mood was a strange mixe of tense and celebratory: the mission plan was more or less on schedule, but pretty much everyone had a notion that someone would get in trouble for this, and it would likely be them. The security shack had been abandoned after the fire was extinguished - short of the capsule literally falling on someone's head, there was no danger to anyone but Cendrillon anymore - but Ignace's goons, sledgehammers in hand, were standing guard in front of the telemetry station. A jury rigged AM transmitter broadcast audio of the launch to the few cars that came into range of it; signs had been put on the road to tell people what to tune into. For the last few minutes, there had been precious little to transmit.

"...We're getting telemetry!" Sergei announced with a cheer.

"...CAPCOM, this is Falcon. It's beautiful beyond words. We should have sent a poet."

* * *

 _Author's note: If the notion of a simple battery swap defeating a bolt of lightning sent to stop a spacecraft right after launch seems farfetched to you, google "SCE to AUX" to find out how it went in real life.  
_


	21. Chapter 16 - Pride

Youtube: zZhtXDTnFwA

Alone above the sky, Cendrillon worked quickly. She'd practiced the procedure.

First, refill personal air tank from main air tank and reset the timer.

Then, get the fragile stuff - digital camera, solar panels, sensors - out of the capsule.

Then, wire it all up. With the primary battery gone, the plan to leave it up there to act as an additional continuity box had to be scrubbed - the sensors would only be able to transmit when the Sun was up.

Carefully, Cendrillon removed most of the electronics from the capsule and moved them over to the surface setup, using the camera tripod to make another hole in the ice with the pick and letting the plumb-bob antenna dangle down again. The last part of the procedure was check voltages - a little low, but with tolerance - and turn the radio on again. There had been no time to set up repeaters, so the only way for Cendrillon to talk to Earth was to tether her suit to the radio box via headphone jack.

"Glass Slipper Base here. It's beautiful beyond words. We should have sent a poet."

"We're reading you four by five, Glass Slipper. And yeah, we heard you the first time. Confirm getting visual on SSTV. Can you wave for the camera?"

Cendrillon could hear the cheering and high fives in the background of the CAPCOM microphone. Awkwardly, she loomed over the digital camera, held up a hand, waited until a blinking LED told her that a frame had been sent, and then moved her hand, a few seconds later. No video - not enough bandwidth - but slow scan would do. She double checked the photocells that would prevent the camera from being aimed directly at the Sun; hopefully, the rig would last long enough for a second mission to be set up.

A pang of worry. What if she didn't have enough time to take her findings, and conclusion, to the Temple? She might just have to ask for the recovery car to drive her there directly.

Cendrillon took another breather, but this time the stillness and silence above her felt ominous. Calm before the storm, even though the stars above and ice below still scintillated like the jewels behind the Throne.

"Right. Physics experiments."

These would get filmed; hopefully the film roll would make it home intact.

Hold up a measuring tape - millimeters, of course - to the tripod, use a rat trap mechanism to drop a small rock and a downy feather, keep a chronometer in frame: enough to show that gravity up there was a good ten percent less than on the surface, and that there was no appreciable atmospheric pressure up there. A basic science demo, and one that Cendrillon hoped would be shown in school, but also a confirmation that the laws of physics as known still applied. A few steps away, a suite of basic sensors confirmed Cendrillon's findings.

"... We've done the math on the timing test, gee local is approximately nine meters per second. You've lost weight!"

"Gee thanks, CAPCOM! Okay, I'm going to try a jump now." Putting the camera on the tripod, she stepped away from any cracks in the ice, dared to jump - and almost fell flat on her bum.

Why do the saved say that those who aren't are lost? Cendrillon wondered. Confirming to the ground station that she was fine, she felt that she was exactly where she belonged.

Cendrillon recharged her air pack, left the camera pointed at the Milky Way so that the low resolution digital camera could be used to aim the high resolution film camera, and announced that she would take a walk to shave an ice sample for spectroscopy and see if she got lucky enough to find a micrometeorite.

Down below, the ground crew took turns aiming the pan/tilt contraption. Cendrillon walked. No wonder that the ancient believed that God resided in the heavens... the spectacle above her was grand, glorious. And yet, now God had decided that humanity didn't need to see it anymore, and His Son dwelled in a temple, far below and slightly to the East. Cendrillon looked at the appropriate point, roughly.

After the Glorious Appearing, the world had been mercilessly flattened - no more mountains, fjords, waterfalls - so that Greater Jerusalem and her Temple would stand tall above all. Was it blasphemous to look down on the house of God? Probably not - air travel was very much still a thing, after all. Surely the security corridor around the Temple wasn't wide enough to span a horizon at airliner height? Would people be permitted to build a permanent base up here?

Would people care if they weren't? Cendrillon felt like she was at her destination - all that her and her friends had said, done, been, had been for this - but in truth, there were many like her. Many waiting to fly. This trip wasn't even the end of the beginning. It was just the start.

She felt a pang in her heart, and her next breath came belabored. Low pressure on her personal tank? Not according to the timer... Must be a diffusion leak. Cendrillon took strong steps back to the capsule, and quickly recharged her tank.

"CAPCOM, I've got some sort of air issue. Assume halved personal tank capacity. Can I stay until sunset? The Moon isn't up yet."

"Stand by, Glass Slipper... Yes, but don't tarry until morning."

This cut astronomical observation down by a third, but that was just how it was going to be.

"Sergei... Thank you. Thank you."

"Thank you, Cindy. Believe me, I'm exactly where I want to be."

Cendrillon could understand that. Two people, fifty miles of sky apart, living the same dream. Okay, let's not get mushy - audio preempts telemetry, so let's not waste bandwidth.

The next few hours went surprisingly fast. Cendrillon cross-checked her observations with a star chart, and reported what discrepancies she could see; notably, either her leveling equipment was off or the precession of Polaris was noticeably less than what it should have been.

Eye protector on, she performed basic solar spectroscopy - nothing new there - and confirmed that in the 93 years since anyone had seen the night sky, there had either been no new supernovae within optical range, or any that happened had already burned themselves out.

"Bummer. We were hoping to put the SN1987A question to rest."

"Ignace, this is Glass Slipper. Only CAPCOM on the horn, please... Didn't fancy you for an astronomy buff, though, I'm impressed."

"It would've been nice to be able to confirm that the universe is older than 6000 years with fresh data, that's all."

That had been a major point of theoretical contention through the space program's development - most believers reckoned that the Glorious Appearing trumped any astronomical data regarding the age of the universe; a fledgling community of skeptical science geeks was starting to disagree, and resurrecting the various arguments for the validity of the Standard Model. Right this minute, Cendrillon didn't care one way or the other. The stars were THERE, it was all that mattered. Besides, would finding a new supernova with cobalt halos even change anyone's mind if the first one didn't?

"We'll need better instruments if we want to catch a Mercury transit precisely enough to witness general relativity. Next mission?"

"We would have to go up with a whole observatory..."

Cendrillon kept collecting data; this was more of an engineering mission than a science one. Any serious astronomical observation would require a permanent presence on the canopy - with any luck, the digital camera would last six months up there and allow for parallax measurements, but there was little guarantee of that. An aluminum disc and a piece of cardboard were used to check whether general relativity still applied when a nearby star transited behind the Sun. Not the sort of thing one could really check with hand instruments...

"Inconclusive, but you're closer to Einstein's number than to von Soldner's. We'll have to do it again."

"Ack that. Setting up the laser: Glass Slipper out for a few minutes."

The Moon was due up soon, and Cendrillon had to work quickly. The simple rig was also the most power-hungry instrument, and they'd be lucky to be able to fire it a few times. The Soviet and American lunar missions had left a number of retroreflectors on the lunar surface: firing a laser at them and measuring the interval of the return pulse could give an extremely precise indication of the distance between the Earth and the Moon. It would also confirm that the equipment left on the Moon was still there.

Cendrillon stopped working just long enough to take a nice, high resolution picture of the moonrise. Below, the canopy's lensing made the Moon look like a white ball of light, much like the Sun would have had pre-Appearing; she was the first in almost a century to see the Earth's natural satellite in its imperfect beauty, dark "seas" of basalt and brighter regolith. Until she got back with the film pictures, the ground crew would have to make do with the grainy broadcast images.

She never could see "the man in the moon", even when she was little, but she'd always taken it on faith that there had been men on the moon. Now, she would no longer have to. "Aiming laser to Mare Imbrium... set. Count to ten and pulse away, CAPCOM."

The powerful diode lasers, scavenged from DVD burners and fed a high-power diet of electricity by a self-thermoregulating constant current driver, ate up enough power that Cendrillon had to turn off everything else other than the telemety radio; this included audio and indicators, so the timing experiment would be directed by the ground. She had nothing to do other than look on - away from the laser, obviously - for the next few minutes.

Mars. She could see the pink dot among the white ones unaided, after having triangulated it the first time. Would they go back to the Moon, or aim for the red planet first. Mars, the god of war, the best place in Cendrillon's opinion to prove that there wouldn't have to be a fight nine centuries from now. She tried to imagine herself as an old granny, watching the ferrous hills from a hab, and found that she couldn't quite manage to. She shifted the image to the coast of Nice, her family's ancestral home, and imagined the short but steep cliffs that constituted its coastline being back there; she found that she likewise couldn't quite visualize it. Why was it so hard to imagine the future? Her brain didn't want to cooperate.

This is wrong, she thought. She'd just opened that very future to nearly endless possibilities. She'd vindicated Galileo and Einstein. She'd flown an actual rocket into actual space! Why couldn't she feel proud of her work?

"I have earned this! I have the right to feel pride! We got here! On our own! By our own efforts! In everybody's face!" Suddenly it was her who wanted a fight. She wanted the VIP treatment when getting home. She wanted to get into an argument with a Geocentrist and slap them in the face with her pictures. She...

... Wait, why was she shouting at the heavens again? Check oxygen levels... There, recharged. Diffusion leak bigger than she thought, probably. She was in danger of getting the bends: it would be best to wrap up the science and head home.

The laser stopped pulsing, and Cendrillon plugged in her audio jack again.

"CAPCOM, what's the result?"

"Good job, Glass Slipper. Delta-cee negligible. Accounting for the Earth's loss of mass at the time of the Rapture, the Moon is right where it should be. Can you ping the other retroreflectors?"

"Uh, negative CAPCOM. I'm using up more air than I thought, I think. Not getting hard to breathe, but I have to keep extra pressure in the tank."

"Roger that. Ready to come home?"

"Let me collect ice and water samples first. CAPCOM, a thought, what if I leave the secondary battery up here?"

"Let's see..." Sergei quickly polled the people who'd built the pneumatic systems: could the capsule descend with whatever voltage was available from the stricken primary battery? "I'm getting mixed responses here. Why do you want to?"

"It'll increase the chances of the camera and sensors still working in six months' time. That way we can do parallax measurements."

The capsule was designed to come down without any power - many of the mechanisms that would have been servo-operated on an orbital capsule were run by tension cable and manual grips, to save weight and complexity. If worst came to worst, Cendrillon could swim down to the bottom of the canopy, plummet to the ground, and use a personal parachute for descent. It basically guaranteed frostbite, but losing a few toes was preferrable to death.

"I've got a cautious GO from Engineering, Glass Slippers. Your call."

"I call unpowered descent then. Will wire the primary battery to the radio transponder and hope there's enough juice in it for you guys to find me quickly if you can't see me come down."

Sergei was worried. For the sake of a few more bits of data, her friend was going to come down falling. He heard Elianto and Mercy begin to pray. Had they even ever had simulated an unpowered descent? No radio, no altitude check other than by dead reckoning...

"Ack that. We'll send recovery cars out. CAPCOM out."

"Thank you. I'm going to do a bit of ice shaving and come home."

Cendrillon performed the last tasks. One more stellar transit, which gave much better numbers - Ha, she thought, Einstein is vindicated! Take that, Dr. Hovind! - and a quick weigh-in of a block of ice taken from the top and the bottom of the ice layer. She let the telemetry system pick up the values while she tested the primary battery's cells and excluded the fried ones.

"...Looks like the ice's got a lot of deuterium in it. Good news if we ever need reaction mass. Good job on the science package, we've got a gaggle of giddy geeks down here." That was simple fact: in addition to learning that space's endless possibilities were still available to Humanity, Cendrillon's trip had provided precious engineering data to make them easier to reach. Canopy thickness and composition, flight envelope... The next trip would be easier.

"And one up here, CAPCOM.". Cendrillon felt the cold satisfaction of a job well done, but couldn't really say that she felt giddy. She had a vivid memory of the sheer beauty she'd experienced earlier, sure; she knew exactly what to say and what to write when she delivered her presentation to the Temple, now; but... it all felt cold somehow. Probably something to do with the physical heat loss: the suit had done its job, but she was beginning to feel the chill and with air and power running lower than planned, it was safer to come home. Maybe I'm starting to get old, Cendrillon chided herself.

"See you soon, Cindy.

"I'm going to break the ice and drop home. Beginning unpowered descent in 450 seconds. Glass Slipper over and out."

The small weather station at the top of the canopy would keep providing sensor and image data for a while - months? years? - but there would be little trace of Cendrillon's journey otherwise. With a few strikes of the icepick, the capsule came loose from the thin new ice; Cendrillon got into it, put the film canisters and samples into the "safe" - they would survive even if she didn't - and closed the hatch. The final procedure was to allow both the cabin and the fuel tank to flood, so as to make the fall down.

Cendrillon reset her chronometer - a fancy scuba watch donated for the occasion by an old woman who'd worked mission control for the Shuttle missions - and made sure that it'd start the moment she got out of the water: with no power, the only way she had to know her altitude for drogue and parachute deployment was by dead reckoning.

Working the valves, she noticed that they were harder to move than they'd been hours before; she didn't feel weak, per se, but the evidence said otherwise. Probably the adrenaline rush wearing off.

"We did it! Together! We stand tall!" she shouted at nobody in particular from inside her mask.

On the ground, they only knew that Cendrillon was starting to come home from the accelerometer bump. All other instruments kept recording, too simple to witness.

The capsule flooded up, and began its fall.


	22. Chapter 17 - Fall

Youtube: 94DRTLubyuw

70km up, Cendrillon fell. It was cold. The plan had been to take one last picture from the bottom of the canopy, showing the COT campus and the Temple, but Cendrillon had figured that a boatellite could do that any time - best to use the film for an extra shot, a nice starfield picture with the corners framed by Mars and Jupiter.

She yanked a lever and opened the flush valves to let the water out... and nothing happened. The valves must have iced over, or the air tank didn't have enoug pressure left to flush... No power to call it in with, either.

On the ground, as far as everybody knew, nothing was wrong; Sergei and Mercy checked the prevailing winds and drew up likely descent areas on a local map, and asked everybody with a car and enough wakefulness to drive safely to start patrolling them. "Take a first aid kit just in case. If she's not injured, she'll be really cold so the best welcome to Earth you can give her is a great big hug. Take a blanket, too."

A bit of mental math told Cendrillon that the extra mass from the water would cause the drogue chute to deploy prematurely, which wasn't a big deal, and the main chute to rip itself apart on opening, which was. The samples and pictures would survive; she might, with a lot of luck.

Opening the hatch carried a different risk: the capsule woudld start tumbling. This was not a big deal for a Vostok style spherical capsule, but they'd gone with a conical design, so as to be able to break the ice... Cendrillon weighted her options with mathematical

Cendrillon threw all her weight and strength onto the hatch handle, and felt herself being flung out from the centrifugal force as most of the water left the capsule. The seatbelt held, but she lost hold of the handle, and the hatch slammed itself open.

40km up, Cendrillon shivered in her seat - the quick decompression had removed a lot of heat from the capsule, and the impossibility of closing and repressurizing meant that her body heat was being radiated away rather than kept within the capsule. No power meant no way to run the heater, either. She was reentering the atmosphere, and the hatch - which has slammed itself open before the hinge froze - was completely out of reach, barring a miracle: she couldn't close it. "Next capsule, next capsule's going to have a pull rope for that... and a chemical heater..."

The straight-down fall would generate some reentry heat, but it'd have to heat up the mostly-frozen water still in the fuel tank before it got to her. This had been part of the plan: cold was more survivable than heat. The capsule, aerodynamically unbalanced by the open hatch, started to spin. Cendrillon was glad she hadn't eaten anything before or through her mission.

20km up or so, Cendrillon was regretting ever leaving the ground: the spinning, buffeted by wind and the irregular profile rather than kept at a steady rate by fins, was worse than on ascent. Yanking the lever that released the drogue chute took an act of will.

* * *

"I see her!"

"Roger that, Recovery Four."

"East of my position."

"East? But you're already the eastmost - wind check!"

"Westerly, 20 knots, WNW high, 35 knots.""

"... No! Too little wind deviation means - "

"She's falling too fast! Recovery Three and Five, converge on Four's position. All other recovery vehicles, double back! Everyone with first aid experience, muster here for pickup. Mercy, get a couple of people, you have to improvise an oxygen tent. Ignace. I know you have painkillers and who knows what else lying around. It's your cousin. Hold out on me and you'll need all of them for yourselves." Dammit. The Soviets and Americans had helicopters. "Elianto, go to town. Find an ambulance, and get them to follow you."

People sprang into action. Mercy had never seen a medical emergency. Is this what it looked like when the Rapture happened, people all over the world scrambling to handle the crisis? From the stories she'd heard, the responses back then had been... subdued, if anything. Maybe everybody was just in shock.

* * *

5km up, very roughly, Cendrillon was holding her head in place with one hand; she'd hit it against the seat enough time that the padding made little difference. With effort, she tensed her neck muscles and yanked on the chute release with all her heft. The wind had picked up considerably by then, and between having no sensors and having been spun around like mad for the whole descent, she had no way to tell. The main chute opening gave her a yank almost sideways, rather than backwards. That, plus having had to strain forward to get to the lever, meant that Cendrillon hit her head on the unpadded edge of her seat. She screamed. Dislodged from the quick change in acceleration, the capsule's hatch finally closed; Cendrillon saw the main parachute deploy through the small hatch viewport, just like it should. There was nothing more she could do, she told herself - the descent still felt a bit too rapid, but would be survival, barring whatever the opposite of a miracle was. By now, Cendrillon was pretty much operating on autopilot. Her speech slurred, she ordered herself to activate the transponder and prepare for final descent; slowly, her hands plugged the radio transponder into what was left of the primary battery, and her ears picked up a faint beep-beep-beep on the audio circuit as a reward.

Not realizing she had a concussion, Cendrillon let herself relax after deciding that it was done, and made the mistake of closing her eyes...

* * *

"Sergei, this is Elianto. I've left a road marker for the ambulance if you've got one. Route Yodh, intersection 42. I'm picking up the Falcon's transponder signal, weak, but it's there. Going off-road now."

"Ack that. Everyone, muster at the road marker and start combing the grounds!" Sergei wanted to head over, but knew that he had to coordinate. Road markers, flares... getting enough boatellites up on the canopy that they could be used for GPS couldn't come fast enough. That'd probably be his next project. If they managed to save even one life, it'd be worth it!

* * *

Cendrillon came to when her air tank was finally depleted. By reflex, she jumped forward, restrained by the seat belt, and clawed her mask off and gasped loudly. Fresh, clean Holy Land air rewarded her effort. She'd landed. In a daze, she climbed out of the capsule and fell on her knees, then kissed the ground. Everything hurt, but not badly. Thirsty. So thirsty. The second thing Cendrillon did was lick the water dripping out of the directional nozzles; the ice blocking them had finally melted, and there was a puddle of wet sand on the ground. It tasted like lubricant and who knows what else, but she didn't care. Cendrillon lapped it up. Dimly, she realized that she'd had a concussion. Looking up at the ever-blue sky, she couldn't tell what time it was; the numbers on her chronometer didn't make much sense at the time, other than she could tell that it'd gone all the way around. "Falcon here, landing successful. Please come and get me. Over and out" she mumbled into the disconnected radio.

Next. Next. Next task in mission. What did she have to do next? Secure samples. Done, they were in the small "safe" in the capsule. Land. Done. Go to the Temple. Tell God there didn't have to be a fight. Okay. She bent to the ground and lapped up the last of the canopy water, pointed herself eastward, and started walking towards the Temple. You have a concussion, stop. No, you don't know how long you have. You must finish the mission.

* * *

"I can't find her!"

"Same problem here, Four. We get into what should be visual range using the transponder, but - she isn't there. All I see is sand and shrubs."

"Five here. Same issue."

The recovery cars kept driving around, trying to follow a transponder signal that was slowly weakening. They couldn't see a capsule that should've been less than half a horizon away.

* * *

Almost immediately, Cendrillon started stripping. She drank the water that had accumulated on her breathing apparatus, and shed it. Then went her mask. The ice boots were heavy, and got in the way; off they came. The cold of the stratosphere had been replaced by the warmth of the Holy Land, and her suit was designed to hold onto as much body heat as possible. She slipped out of it without breaking her stride. Cendrillon had always treated the world as a shoes-optional environment: the sand felt soft under her feet. She felt hot, hot and dry. It took an effort of will to not remove her shirt. "Nobody in the Temple wants to see your flat chest" she told herself in what she imagined was Nicolette's voice, then giggled.

Cendrillon kept walking, stumbled once and fell, got back up without looking back. The Sun was still where she expected it to be; she hadn't gotten turned around - well, she'd gotten turned around several thousand times, but figured out which way to go. Go to the Temple. Tell Yahweh that there did not have to be a fight. Go to her cousins. Tell them that there did not have to be a fight. Show proof. Finish the mission...

* * *

"We found the capsule!"

"Shoot a flare!"

Exhasperated, the crew of recovery cars two and three had decided to take the most advantage of the transponder while it was still there and drive slowly across the plain, linking their directional receivers with a cable to get a wider triangulation base and driving abreast twenty meters apart with the cable between the two vehicles. That had worked - they drove almost to the point of running the capsule over before noticing it. Both crews chalked it up to target fixation and trying to drive abreast in perfect alignment so that the receivers could do their job.

Save for a visibly dented hatch and warped hinge, the capsule was intact. Cendrillon's suit, mask and boots were just outside of it.

"Where is she?!"

"I don't know. Look, Ignace - no blood, no bodily fluids - she made it!"

"But where did she go? She wouldn't wander off... Heh, actually, my cousin WOULD wander off, wouldn't she. We have to find her. Maybe she's got a concussion. You guys spread out and keep looking, I'm taking one of the cars."

"Where are you going?"

"I'm dropping off the samples with Sergei, then we're both going to go to Cabot's. He's got his own photo processing setup. Whatever else happens..." - Ignace got his bulk into the capsule and retrieved the film from the safe - "...the stuff in here has to be available in multiple copies by tomorrow morning. To anyone who asks."

Ignace restarted one of the cars; his comrades removed the battery from the other and hooked it up to the transponder so that the other crews could find the place. Cendrillon was on foot, she couldn't have gone far...

Over the radio, the brief cheer that accompained a bulletin indicating mission success was muted almost immediately once it'd become clear that Cendrillon wasn't with the recovery team.

* * *

Eventually, Cendrillon came into view of the Temple. She must've been severely tired; the sand under her feet was almost white, rather than beige. The Temple itself looked smaller than it did in pictures. A brief pang of regret for not getting to see it from above... Focus, Cindy, any boatellite can do that, save it for the next flight.

She walked in the courtyard. The sun and moon must've both been up high: the marble and alabaster that covered the Temple bedrock was bright enough to look almost white, so that she could just see outlines. She made herself kept walking into the inner courtyard, and nobody stopped her. At least her feet were getting a better grip on the rock, her steps felt faster and wider...

Cendrillon opened another door, unperturbed by the lack of personnel, and found herself in front of the White Throne. Wanting to be polite, she bowed, and did not see her - or any - shadow.

Oh.

That would be why.

She had a contingency plan for the rest of the mission. If anything, this made delivering this part of the message easier. She only wished she'd gotten a bit of rest before tackling this...

Cendrillon gazed upon the visage of God, bluish and glowing and bearded, and she found it oddly familiar.

Behind her, where she'd walked in, was a flat surface. Near the Throne was an androgynous being, standing in front of a lectern - a closer look showed that the lectern was in fact, in and of itself, the book, the spine being just that tall.

The whole scene, again, looked familiar; she'd seen it in one of those little comics that got left around. It was probably a familiar setup for her mind's benefit, she figured.

REVIEW THIS LIFE.

That was her cue. She turned towards what she figured was an Angel. "Look... if you want to do the whole trial thing, that's great, I'm happy to sit down for it, we can do that, but first, I have to tell you something! It's a lot more important than just what happens to me me!"

Cendrillon's life passed before her eyes, as if on a screen. At every little thing she'd done, the gestalt experience would slow down, as if to highlight it. "Hold on, this is missing a few things. I remember talking to Jenny right before the Appearing..."

She quickly found that she had no control over the replay. So, this what was people meant when they said that one's life would go before one's eyes upon death... "Yes, look, I was there, I was a pain in the neck as a little kid, that's great. Listen to me, both of you, please! This is important! I've come from above the firmament with very interesting field results!"

Cendrillon's life kept wooshing past her, the Almighty, and the angel. Since they weren't interrupting her, she tried making her pitch.

"... and the retroreflection experiment shows that there's still hardware on the Moon! I know that the little bit of Revelation that hasn't happened yet says that there's going to be this huge war with a billion soldiers in it. But that's a horrible idea! Look at all of history."

Cendrillon saw herself ask for a copy of A Brief History Of Time at the provincial library. There was a black hole where one of the pre-Rapture shelves had been.

"If we know one thing for sure is that when a war of that magnitude happens, NOBODY ever wins it! But look. That's 900 years off. There doesn't have to be a fight! People who don't want to live under your rule can just... can just move! There's at least another whole world that we can colonize just in this solar system! You can see everything, right? Then look in my head like you're already doing! I've seen it! There will be pictures in the papers tomorrow if you need more proof!"

Cendrillon saw herself recite a profession of faith in front of Cameron, and understood that she was supposed to feel extremely guilty. That one she genuinely felt bad about: lying is something one should only ever do in emergencies. Still... at the time, she felt in danger, and it had seemed the easiest way to get out of there. Rationally, Cameron was anything but dangerous, of course, but at the time... Cendrillon pushed the disproportionate guilt aside. Groveling right now would get in the way of the job, and the job was... not... done.

"Yes, okay, that was a bit slimy of me. You try being a girl and being alone in a room with someone twice your size, OK? Anyway, this isn't about me! This is about, like, half of everyone on Earth nine hundred years from now! There doesn't need to be a fight! You can just - If people start leaving now, there'll be a lot less people to evacuate, and we'll have time to terraform other worlds! Make plans for interstellar travel! Then we can just - we can just be neighbors! Wouldn't that be nice?"

Cendrillon saw herself spike some cookies in order to free a bunch of kids at a gay conversion therapy camp.

"I thanked You for that, remember? That's exactly what I am talking about! There didn't have to be a fight, and there wasn't, and nobody got hurt! Yeah, a bunch of people me included got the runs, big deal! Compare that to stuff blowing up!"

She tried to recall, as vividly as she managed, some of her earliest memories, during the Tribulation. She saw one of the attempted bombings of Petra, from a distance, once. Nobody inside the city was hurt, but outside... And yet, the image did not change. She saw herself agreeing to a bunch of raunchy photosets courtesy of Tarl Cabot.

"Are you... you people even listening to me!? I died because I turned 100, didn't I? That makes me an adult, doesn't it? Then you can damn well treat me like one! I'm trying to stop a war and you're worried about who's going to see me naked, except it's not even going to be me!"

Cendrillon saw her cry of proud triumph, above the sky, just a few scant hours ago.

"THERE! There it is! Stop the frame! There, look. Mars. Spectroscopy shows traces of water ice. Sergei's worked it all out, we can have the place terraformed in three hundred years, tops! Look at-"

The image went. Cendrillon looked at the great visage of the Almighty, and the almost featureless face of the angel.

"...it doesn't matter what I say or what I show you, it's not going to make a speck of difference, is it..."

* * *

Finding Cendrillon's body had been relatively easy - Elianto got lucky, literally looking up at a spot that he could've sworn he'd been through twice already and seeing his friend. She looked unharmed, and her body was cold, colder than it had any right to be. Finding an ambulance with a working defibrillator, and someone who remembered how to use it, on the other hand, had been hard. Elianto was exhausted, having performed CPR to the best of his skills for incredibly long minutes.

"Physically she's fine" the elderly paramedic said "just - every time we disconnect the defib, she goes again. I don't understand it."

"Keep going!"

"I'm trying, but - look, the batteries on this thing aren't going to last much longer, it's the third one we try and we don't have any more. Maybe if your friends get a generator here in time..."

Cendrillon's body had convulsed, her eyes opened, sound had come out of her throat - but they were all reflexes, nothing more, the paramedic had explained. Any amount of prayer had received no answer.

* * *

OPEN THE BOOK OF LIFE.

The Angel opened the book that was its own lectern, and browsed through the first couple thousand pages. Cendrillon was staring straight ahead, feeling nothing but despair. There would be a fight... and everybody would lose it. If there was a time where she'd have dropped into Hell without any resistance, that was it.

A few moments later, the Angel spoke. "Her name does not appear, Lord."

Cendrillon felt the full weight of the gaze of God. A part of her told her that she was supposed to feel guilty. All she could process was despair, the Angel had kept going just like she hadn't-

"...Wait a minute. You guys don't have any choice either... do you? That's what's going on. You don't want to drop me into Hell either, you don't have any choice, there's some prophecy somewhere and now you think you don't have any choice!"

DEPART FROM ME, YE CURSED, INTO EVERLASTING FIRE...

"Hold it. You know what? NO. This is stupid. There's literally no reason why it has to go this way! You do have a choice! Stop this! Do you really want there to be a giant war and then nothing else forever? Stop it! You can stop it a lot easier than we can!"

...PREPARED FOR THE DEVIL AND HIS ANGELS.

"Uh uh. J'y Suis, J'y Reste."

The Angel held out a hand into a door, that hadn't been there before, with a staircase leading downwards. It put its hand on her shoulder, in a seemingly friendly gesture. It certainly felt like the only path left.

"Hand off me or I'll bite you." Cendrillon never had to learn how to fight - the only fighting advice she'd ever gotten was from Jenny, in the final year of the Carpathian regime, when the world was in anarchy and there were people on the loose who could and would do horrible things to a seven-year-old. Some may even have repented and be still around. Go crazy, she'd said, bite, cry, make noise, make it not worth it to target you. The angel tugged, gently but with the strength of inevitability.

* * *

Rayford soon sat in Cameron Williams's great room surrounded by Irene, Chloe, Cameron, Kenny, and Abdullah and Yasmine Ababneh.

They all looked staggered.

"Who died?" Rayford said, thinking he was being rhetorical.

"Cendrillon Jospin," Cameron said.

"The French girl? She was a leader, with you since the beginning."

Chloe sat shaking her head. "You could knock me over with a fig, Dad."

* * *

What was left of the Angel after a moment of pure untrained rage simply disappeared, like a marshmellow melting. Cendrillon clenched her fists. So much for pacifism... She looked at the lectern, and the Angel - or an exact copy - was there again. Just like before, it moved to gently but firmly lead her into Hell.

"Look! There still doesn't have to be a fight! See what happened? There was one and nobody won, that... that guy there got hurt, I got hurt, we're exactly where we started! Please, if you must watch this again, at least - grok it!"

Cendrillon thought of a movie she'd seen. Something about a nuclear-equipped AI trying to win at tic tac toe...

* * *

Mercy was trying to process the news. "But no one's died since the Glorious Appearing! There must be some mistake!"

"No mistake." It was Beth Ann Sebastian, the daughter of George and Priscilla Sebastian. "Her capsule returned to earth, but she wasn't in it. They finally found her body a long way away from it. Nobody has any idea what happened."

"So where is she now?"

"In her parents' wine cellar," Ekaterina told her. "There was nowhere else to store it until the funeral."

* * *

Cendrillon, ethereal though she might have been, was out of energy. Knowing that if she hadn't been dead already she'd just about be ready to keel over from exhaustion was probably what did the trick. Just like many times before, the Angel moved to gently but firmly lead her into Hell.

This time, she put his hand down gently. "I... I refuse... to fight you again. There... doesn't have... to be a fight."

EVERY KNEE SHALL BOW.

Cendrillon felt her legs give way, almost by reflex. Instead, she hung onto the Angel, and using what strength she had left turned the cling into a hug, the sort of strong hug that she'd learned to give to the kids at COT. She looked at God. "You... You need a hug, too. You really, really do. Please... there doesn't have to be a fight. Take the credit for it, I don't care, just... choose! Do what's right!"

She hung onto the Angel, basically letting it carry her to the staircase downward.

EVERY KNEE SHALL BOW.

She had to do one more step to exit stage left. Her knees would bend. Cendrillon gave the Angel another squeeze, and touched its forehead.

"You stay. I go. No following."

And pushed herself off the ethereal being, legs extended in a poor attempt at a rolling jump, skipping the narrow staircase and falling straight down beside it.

She would fall for a long time, and knew it. It was dark, and hot.

That was okay. It was the second time today. She squared her shoulders, slowly got in a neutral position, and closed her eyes.

* * *

"How did the conversation go with her parents?" Rayford said. "What are they suggesting you say?"

"They just want a simple eulogy," Cameron said. "But a funeral is no place for me to tell the awful truth. Cendrillon is in hell, no longer with us because she never trusted Christ for salvation. Is that what I tell people? And would her parents forgive me? Perhaps they're in denial, desperate to find some loophole, some reason why a believer might die at one hundred."

Ignace and Lothair had taken a letter to Cendrillon's parents, Luc and Cerise. They'd shown it to Cameron and Chloe, and after a brief conversation, they'd decided that reading it would muddle the important message that the two Glorified wanted to urgently get across.

* * *

The crack in the firmament had healed almost completely, but it would be a long time before it could return to its pristine state. On top of snowball Earth only a small bundle of solar panels and instruments, clumped together like a miniature town a child might make with Christmas present boxes, kept beeping and whirring. Even though on the ground everyone was too distraught to care for the time being, the machines, too simple to grieve, kept taking in data. Each significant line would, through a script, be added to Cendrillon's diary on her room's terminal, until it was disconnected.


	23. Epilogue - Legacy

Youtube: 2OY5sUGxweM

Raymie sat with Kenny, Bahira and Zaki at Cendrillon's funeral a few days later. It was held in one of the recreation centers on COT property and drew thousands, mostly children who knew Cendrillon from COT. Strange, Raymie thought, but this would spur the return of an entire industry.

Cendrillon's extended family filed into the front rows just before the service began, and her father Luc was the first to take the podium. "We praise Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith," he began, laboring. "But this is neither the memorial of a life nor the celebration of a home going, for as you all know, there is only one place for the dead now, and it is not heaven. Cendrillon's mother and I covet your prayers for our healing. We loved our daughter as much as parents could love a child, and we are in pain—deep, inexplicable pain. We have asked her friend and ministry supervisor, Cameron Williams, to say a few words."

Cameron felt the presence of the grieving Lord with him and believed He gave him utterance. All he could do was present the unvarnished truth: that Cendrillon had seemed a wonderful person and had accomplished many good deeds. "But the sad fact is that either she never saw her personal need for a Savior, or she chose to ignore that need."

While the Jospins had okayed this, it was apparent the extended family was caught off guard. Cameron caught the glares of some and the seeming distraction of others. "You may think this is hardly the time and place for a message like this, but Cendrillon's parents agree that there may be no more appropriate venue. I have a challenge and a warning to everyone who has not yet reached the age of one hundred and who has not received Christ as Savior. The one common denominator throughout all ages, from the creation of Adam to the present kingdom, is that all have a choice to make about God: will you or will you not accept what the Scriptures call 'so great a salvation'? Those who choose Him will enjoy His entire thousand-year reign and enter the heaven He has prepared for His own. Those who do not will be judged, die in their sins, and spend eternity in the lake of fire.

"This is without question the most important decision you will ever make. I ask you directly: have you personally received Jesus the Christ and acknowledged Him as your only Lord and Savior? If you have not, I urge you to do so right now by telling God, 'Thank You for sending Your Son, Jesus, to die on the cross for my sins. I confess I am a sinner and ask Your forgiveness. I receive Jesus as my Lord and Savior and surrender my life and future to Him.'

"Should you leave here today without acknowledging Jesus, do not say you haven't been warned that you will not survive your hundredth birthday and that you will suffer needlessly for eternity."

* * *

If there had been any official intent to downplay the space mission in the press, Cendrillon's funeral made it moot: the first Natural death in many years, just by virtue of having happened, had made the global news, and the circumstances surrounding it could not go unmentioned. A day after her death, every part of the world that had any sort of news service knew that a canopy-breaking launch had been attempted and accomplished. The reaction was mixed. Was space exploration sinful? Some called on a moratorium on manned missions, others went further and demanded that boatellites be ordered to sink themselves. A few people even called for an end to the teaching of astronomy in schools. On the other hand, the mission data was downloaded millions of times, and so were the crew's writing on where space exploration could go in 900 years of peace and prosperity. Boatellite launch attempts benefited significantly from the flight envelope developed by the Falcon crew.

Nicolette's photo shoots ended up happening, albeit much tamer than planned; Tarl Cabot published the starfield photos, the science report, and the circumstances surrounding it, verbatim in the dirty mags that he peddled. If sex sold, death and forbidden-fruit type material sold even more, enough for Cabot to easily purchase a gold tooth after losing one to Ignace's right hook after a particularly nasty comment about there being any more volunteers for other lethal thrill-seeking that he could "document".

A few days after Cendrillon's death - on the same day as the funeral, as it turned out - many TOL pubs and rave warehouses held a "science night" in remembrance, with starfield projections and colorful physics demos. After thinking about it, Nicolette had decided that a plan to pretend to be Cendrillon long enough to cast doubts about her death would just make noise without accomplishing anything. TOL leadership took note; maybe there was something to tapping the geek contingent in addition to the party people...

Elianto carved a pair of astronaut wings out of some wood recovered from the launch ramp, and epoxied it next to the door of the COT planetarium. It was taken down. It was put back up. It happened enough times that the epoxy had left an indelible mark in their shape.

* * *

Quite a few people had responded to Cameron's altar call there and then; with most everyone else filing out of the hall, Cendrillon's extended family and close friends huddled together in a corner, to wait until there was enough room to respectfully take the casket away; Cendrillon had left no instructions on how to be buried, and the body had been prepared in her Sunday best - with the incongruous exception of a pair of homemade sandals that some of Tarl's people had cut out of a slab of glass and fastened with leather straps; it had seemed appropriate.

Cerise found that she couldn't read the contingency letter that had been given her; as soon as Cameron had left the family to tend to those who wished to convert or confirm, her and Luc's stoicism gave way to a flood of tears. Hesitantly, she gave it to Nicolette to read aloud. Nicolette did the voice, as had been agreed, and there wasn't a dry eye in the small group. Chloe had stood in the doorway, keeping a respectful distance.

 _Dear everyone,_

 _If you are reading this letter, it means that my primary mission was a success but I have died immediately after reentry (If you were given a different letter to send in another instance, please get rid of it!)._

 _Please understand that it's OK. Don't be sad for me. I am probably talking to God right now. We have a lot to talk about, so that actually worked out: if I had survived the mission, I would have gone to the Temple to show my findings anyway. That was not the whole point, but it definitely was a possible part of the mission. In space missions you have to make the most of every available resource.  
_

 _You should have received and recovered a lot of pictures from my trip. I understand that these days it's all about witness testimony rather than forensic science, but please, take my word for it, the stars are still up there for us to fall in love under, we just have to want it a bit more than we used to._

 _Please look at my data. It was worth my life to me to bring it back. Below the canopy the Moon is too bright to look at, but above, you can still see the Sea of Tranquility, the craters... even the spots where there's still human-built stuff up there!_

 _That's the Moon. There's Mars. Sergei has a wonderful idea about going to Europa and the moons of Saturn. Seriously, read his stuff on treating the canopy as an asset rather than as a hindrance!_

 _My point was not to be the first up there. I wanted to go because... well, all my friends are great at something! Be it woodworking or math or just being a supremely caring person. Me? I'm Jackie of all trades mistress of none. So I was the most expendable, really. Okay, that and I did want to go first._

 _Mom, Dad, do not be sorry for me, please. You agreed that I was an adult, and I decided to put my life into this. I am with God now. And even if I am not, it was worth doing. That's what being an adult means - taking responsibility, making choices and making sure they're the right ones. You taught me this._

 _And here's the big reveal. Here's why it was all worth doing for me. The last prophecy we have says that 900 years from now, there's going to be a big war, and then the Judgement, and a lot of people will get hurt, and die, and even go to Hell forever maybe._

 _That's nothing new, we hear this one about two Sundays a year, right? But that's just it! The big reveal is that THERE DOES NOT HAVE TO BE A FIGHT! Fights happen when there's not enough resources, and we have all the room in the universe!  
_

 _Some of my friends are believers. Some are not. So what? They're my friends either way and I care about them either way! I don't want them or their descendants to fight each other to the death for no reason!  
_

 _Someone I respect once told me that there is nothing of value, that comes from us, that we can offer God. That broke my heart. It means that I could not be friends with God at all. No relationship can be a one way street... So, I set off to find something worthwhile to present to the Temple. Looks like I get to present it in person instead! It's not the pictures, or the telemetry data, or the work we did to make sure the sky isn't the limit. It's this simple concept: THERE DOES NOT HAVE TO BE A FIGHT._

 _It's in our hands! The meek have inherited the Earth? Okay, great! You don't want to be meek? Take the cosmos! Okay, there's a prophecy, so what? It's in your hands! Build rockets, not rifles. And if you are one of the meek... let those that aren't go. Let the people who aren't like you go! Sounds familiar? Here's a chance to do the right thing!_

 _Anyway, sorry I died! Please, everyone who helped build the rocket and capsule, don't blame yourself. It worked. I went up and came back down. We knew that it could be dangerous and it's why I wanted to be the one on it. If you got this letter rather than any of the others it means that stuff worked. Let's try again very soon!_

 _See you under the stars. Catch me if you can. I'll be in the corner of your eye...  
_

 _"The Earth is the cradle of Humanity, but a human cannot stay in the cradle forever." -Konstantin Tsiolkovsky_

* * *

It would be many years before these words would make their way above the sky again.

Chloe was alone in the small planetarium, standing up, staring at the orrery tick away its movement but not really looking at it. The room had been closed pending a decision on whether to take it down or not, and after the funeral, she needed a bit of time to collect her thoughts; the ticking of the clockwork helped.

This would happen again, she knew, maybe even soon; as the person in charge of logistic for a large ministry, it behooved her to be ready for it, and help others be ready likewise.

"And so ends the age of innocence... again."

The woman who stood next to Chloe had walked out of the funeral service with the coffin; she might have been one of Cendrillon's relatives. Slightly older than Cindy, she looked nothing like her, instead coming across as vaguely Asian.

"I was just thinking that. Well... we've got to carry on; God's still on His Throne."

"But all's not right with the world. You're right, we'll carry on - it's what humans do. Thank you for being here. Cindy really did look up to you, you know." The woman handed Chloe a copy of Cendrillon's letter to the family. "Jeannie. Jeannie Partout. I already read this, so, you can have it."

"I just... I wish there was something more I could've said to her, and she wouldn't be..."

"You put your life on the line to help those you love thrive. You had a cause, and you were willing to live humbly out of the spotlight for it, before you were willing to die for it. And then you were willing to live humbly for it again. Chloe Williams, the woman who led the Tribulation Force, the graceful bastion, the role model. You should hear the stories that the girls tell about you."

"I... I guess. The guys were, well, off being heroes, and there was work to do, so, I did it. But... I'm here, I got my reward, didn't I? Cendrillon is..."

"...following her own path. We thought it'd be easy just letting ourselves coast to the end of things, just staying in the fishbowl and swimming in circles, and Cendrillon snapped us out of it. That's her legacy, just as your way of getting things done is your legacy."

"That's a lot of genies out of the bottle, for sure. I mean, the space thing is definitely not over, especially if it's declared forbidden. Others will die. Others will get hurt. Other families will need something more than an altar call when it happens... Others will want to fly above the horizon..."

Chloe knew she'd have a lot of work to do, and as she used to do in college, began talking herself through an outline of it. When she looked up, her interlocutor was gone. She walked out of the small planetarium, back into the eternal day of the Millennial Kingdom, and with one smooth motion yanked the "Closed" notice from the door.

* * *

 _Author's note: If you have enjoyed this story, be sure to read "_ _ **Mercy**_ _" and "_ _ **Left Beyond**_ _" to see more about life in the Millennial Kingdom._


	24. Postscript - Remembrance

Valentina Kerman was going to go to Hell. She didn't mind.

She had already turned down the offer of cybernetic enhancements, and after the last stunt by Dr. Kenneth Byrne - raising thousands of resource units in a week to build a cosmology annex to a museum dedicated to Creationist ideas, including that there would be no extraterrestrial life, even after her people's interstellar probe's report and as a response to it - any hope that any missionary might have in converting her might as well be stuck behind an event horizon. Like her comrades, she would go to Hell. The prospect did not scare her. She had faced hotter fires by now. All Hell needed was a launch ramp, and her people, the Cosmists of Baikonur, had been training for centuries to build one. In the last few decades, of course, their ambitions had become less mystical and more realistic...

Val took a deep breath and, against safety regs, turned off the suit's respirator. It was quiet enough that she could hear her own blood flow between heartbeats.

But even that wasn't as quiet as it used to be. Even without atmosphere, the vibrations from the nearby construction site traveled through the ice canopy into her spiked boots. The edge-of-the-world peace of the ice canopy topside was an illusion, one that Val shattered for herself by turning around and looking at the launch complex once more. She let the respirator restart itself.

Val wasn't the sort of person who would pull rank often, but as she'd done a few times in the last weeks, countersigning her own worksheet after amending it with a long-range patrol instead of the supervisory work that she would ordinarily be assigned to.

There it was. Sat scans had caught the anomaly, and now she could see it in person. Valentina stopped the raketasani hydrazine-powered ice skimmer, taking her time and swerving some to avoid wasting propellant on a braking burn. After months of private search, the slightest trace of a depression, and debris that she had confirmed to not be of meteoric origin or a crashed satellite. After nine centuries, micrometeorites and ultraviolet radiation had left little intact, but she could recognize an overturned camera tripod, a long-dead webcam on a frozen wood pedestal, and what she guessed was aluminum plating that had come off or was removed. The description fit.

Having confirmed that, she climbed off the small vehicle and took a few pictures with a Polaroid she bought from the gift shop at Johnson Space Museum. She would share them with family, but they'd not be published.

Then, Val crouched in front of the detritus and carefully, in slow and measured cursive, etched a message on the frozen wood with her soldering iron. The body below was, of course, long gone; the soul, maybe she would meet.

"Cendrillon Jospin, we the Cosmists remember you. Thank you for taking the risk of knowing. We know today that your hypothesis was correct." she whispered, and then left a standard ruggedized geocaching box memory card next to the cenotaph. It contained a pair of gold cosmonaut wings, an ancient photograph of this very location, and a memory card. Valentina took the astronaut wings out of the box, cut the ribbon they were on, and let them fall on top of the overturned camera tripod.

On the box's memory card were, among other things, Cordylon's announcement, barely a week old, that the FFR interstellar probe had located a simple but thriving ecosystem on one of the planets of Alpha Centauri B.

It also contained a thousand Cosmist voices that had been recorded in occasion of the most recent heavy-lift launch, the keel of the interstellar ship Reach.

 _"From the old world's demise,_

 _See an empire rise,_

 _From the Earth, reaching far_

 _Here we are!"_

Valentina Kerman, nee' Zuckermandel, sang those words to herself, saluted, and then turned around, taking in the view of the pristine ice canopy once more. The raketasani would take her back to the work site. She wanted to show the analog pictures to Jeb and Cordylon. Maybe they'd come back there with her, if there was time.

Silently, the raketasani sped back towards the canopy station, recovery gantry and greenhouses and barracks in grey-and-orange against the white-blue ice giving it the appearance of a military base built by a colorblind army. The enormous keel of the interstellar ship Reach was already being loaded onto the launch track.

The Reach's nuclear engines would emit as much radiation as everything humanity had built over the sixty years of the nuclear age, but none of it would hurt a fly. It was all for travel, the first trip of a galaxy spanning mission that would be carried on by Valentina's descendents... if her newlywed husband and herself could get around to settling down and making some. The end of the Millennium and the White Throne Judgement were a few decades away, but in the grand cosmic scheme, they only factored in as a deadline to beat. Below the canopy, The Only Light was preparing its great army for the final showdown, but as far as Val was concerned, Cendrillon had been right; there just didn't have to be a fight.

* * *

Every year, for centuries, Cameron and Chloe Williams had received an invitation from a Jeannie Partout, to attend an October Sky memorial service. Every year they had briefly prayed about it and elected to not RSVP. Due to the interstellar probe transmissions, the sound and fury made by unbelievers all over the world for this particular celebration had been impossible for any good Christian to ignore this year; ordinarily, October 31st was the main Other Light holiday, but this year the whole thing might as well have been moved up a week. Children in astronaut or alien dress-up, the sort of illegal fireworks that he associated with nebulous Fourths of July in the sepia-colored pre-Glorified youth of his memories... space-themed board and TV games for sale, even Christian-owned stores stocking copies of What Goes Up or Kerman Space Program.

COT had seamlessly transitioned from orphanage, to boarding school, to academy, to assisted-living ministry as the Millennium unwound, and was now firmly established as the latter - the children's ministry taking up maybe a tenth of what used to be a sprawling campus but had mostly been turned into pleasant little apartments wound across pools and golf courses. Even here, he'd seen kids dressed up in tin foil and papier mache helmets. It wasn't against the rules, so he had to let it slide.

"Maybe we should go this year, bring a testimony" he told himself. His last attempt to interact with The Outer Light had been spotty, at least - he had put his journalist's hat back on to do an expose' on the government of Osaze diverting funds from their space program towards spreading debauchery in believing territories, only to be foiled by his round of snap interviews happening at the same time as the interstellar probe launch. His "you got mail" pinged; Kenny and Kat wanted to see him, see if he could help with a couple of repairs in their apartment. He found it strange to see his own son and daughter-in-law reduced to geriatrics that he'd have to assist, but such was the Glorified condition; with equanimity, Cameron reminded himself that they too would be remade and improved in only a couple dozen years.

"Then again, maybe not." He'd rather spend time with family, anyway. He wondered what had happened to Luc and Cerise; after the enormous funeral for their daughter, they retreated to the quiet life of their vineyard. Some space nut had stolen Cendrillon's headstone - supposedly, it had been brought up to the sky canopy, at the site of her landing, although both the Osazi and Pacifican space program denied this - and they had not found the body; the last time Cameron had talked to them, they had pretty much forgotten the whole incident. These days, of course, they'd find it easy to forget anything unpleasant.

For the space of a heartbeat, Cameron felt as old as his age number indicated. As the world wound down, it was just so easy to fall into a routine. By this time next week, all the silly space stuff would be gone, and he could get back to running COT without wondering what to do about it.

He decided to reply to Jeannie's invitation for once, a polite decline indicating that he'd instead have to spend the day helping out his Natural offspring, since they'd gotten old and could have used the company and handiness.

Next on the daily, read the Millennium Force report... Ah, there we go. No unusual activity.

Cameron looked eastward, where he knew the Ultimate Temple lay. No fireworks were attempting to pierce the eternal daylight, and the landscape - having slowly reverted to semidesertic over the centuries - looked peaceful and, above all, familiar.

"Jesus is on His throne, and all well with the world."

* * *

 _Author's note: The chronicle of The Omega Legacy and of the last 100 years of the Millennium can be found by Googling_ _ **"Left Beyond Quest"**_ _and clicking on the Archive link that should show up in first position. It is an interesting piece of fiction written cooperatively over the course of about a year. You can also use the redirect URL at_  
http：／／www．f3．to／omega／


End file.
